Lab Grown Diamond Guidance

A Mumbai jeweller told me last month that his biggest headache isn’t competition from other stores—it’s explaining to customers why a ₹2.5 lakh lab diamond might be worth ₹80,000 two years later whilst a similar mined diamond holds closer to ₹2 lakh. The conversation gets awkward fast, especially when the customer bought the lab...

A customer walked into a prominent jewellery shop in Banjara Hills last month, proudly showing off a “lab grown diamond” ring they’d purchased online for ₹85,000. The stone looked brilliant under the shop’s lighting, complete with what appeared to be legitimate certification. Twenty minutes later, after a quick gemological examination, the devastating truth emerged:...

A jeweller in Jubilee Hills last week showed me two identical 1-carat round brilliants under a loupe—both D colour, VVS1 clarity, perfect cut. One was mined in Botswana, the other grown in a laboratory in Singapore. After fifteen minutes of examination, I couldn’t tell which was which. Neither could the three other gemologists in...

When a customer walked into our Hyderabad showroom last week and held up two identical 1-carat diamonds—one lab grown, one mined—she asked our gemologist to identify which was which using only a loupe. After five minutes of careful examination, he admitted defeat. The reason? Both stones were identical in every measurable way except their...