Swarna Ganesh has attended over 100 weddings in his hometown Erode in Tamil Nadu in the past year.

He is a little anxious about the weight he has gained, but Ganesh isn't really complaining. As the franchisee of Titan Industries' [ Get Quote ] Gold Plus chain of jewellery stores, the weddings have meant brisk business - the Erode store earned Rs 25 crore (Rs 250 million) last year with every sign of doing as well this year, too. So much so that the Bangalore-based Titan has stepped up its focus on the lower-end jewellery brand: it has rolled out eight Gold Plus showrooms in the past six months, with another 18 slated to open later this year. That's an indication of the new focus at the Rs 1,483-crore (Rs 14.83 billion) (2005-06 sales) Titan. Managing director Bhaskar Bhat sums it up: "If one can be smart at managing costs, the opportunity to make money at the lower end is huge." Accordingly, for the next few years, Titan will be setting its sights firmly on the lower end of the market, both in jewellery and watches. Over the next five years, Gold Plus will account for a third of Titan's jewellery sales, from less than 5 per cent currently. Jewellery sales, coming almost entirely from the Tanishq brand, are tipped to touch Rs 1,200 crore (Rs 12 billion) in 2006-07 and should grow to Rs around Rs 3,500 crore (Rs 35 billion) by 2011-12. The contribution from low-end watches to total revenues from watches, too, is tipped to go up to 40 per cent, from around 25 per cent at present. The purity plank Of course, that's easier said than done. Consumers from the B and C income groups react to different triggers, have different tastes and need to be communicated with differently. Then, a significant chunk of Gold Plus's target customer group comprises people who are investing in the yellow metal rather than buying it for immediate use - this includes people saving for their weddings, or those putting aside a little something for their daughters' trousseaus. As L R Natarajan, vice president in charge of the Gold Plus business, points out, "There are customers who start buying for their daughters' marriages even if the child is barely six." Over 40 per cent of the estimated annual gold purchases of Rs 70,000 crore (Rs 700 billion) (industry-wide) is accounted for by this group. For such customers, purity of the gold is more important than the variety of designs and quality of workmanship (important issues with the SEC A). Which is why Gold Plus is continuously educating would-be buyers on the need to buy the real thing it has even installed carat meters in all its outlets. Purity is the dominant theme of its media campaigns and also the audio-visual shows and question-answer sessions that it organises at street corners. Equally important is the Tata tag. Gold Plus and Tanishq are two distinct entities - there are no obvious signs to connect the lower-end range with the older, more upscale jewellery brand. Instead, the Tata name is flaunted conspicuously on all Gold Plus hoardings and shopfronts - research by the company showed this was more widely recognised and trusted, in any case. Bonding with the buyer

To make customers feel comfortable, the Gold Plus stores have been designed to look traditional either homelike or resembling temples. Explains R Sharad, head, retail and marketing, Gold Plus, "Many of these buyers are accustomed to buying jewellery from local goldsmiths or family jewellers, so we need to make them feel at home." The price points are low so as to bring in the footfalls: customers can buy as little as one gramme of gold. Exchange of old gold for new - a popular practice in South India [ Images ] - is permitted at just 2 per cent charge, compared with the market rate of 6-8 per cent. "We also make sure that we constantly bring in new designs because customers are demanding and preferences vary from community to community," observes Sharad. Unlike the Tanishq stores, which are a mix of company-owned and franchises, the Gold Plus chain is entirely franchisee-driven. The logic: jewellery is a localised business and in smaller towns especially, the store manager needs to have local contacts and be a trusted individual so as to be able to inspire confidence in customers.