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A Haryana Man, a City of Pearls, and a Decision That Changed Everything

In 1915 or 1916 — depending on who in the family you ask — a young man from a land-owning family in Haryana packed up and moved to Hyderabad. Tibarumal Gupta had no established business waiting for him. What he had was an obsession with precious stones and a hunch that Hyderabad, already centuries deep into its identity as a gemstone trading center, was the right place to build something.

By 1920, that hunch had become a business. Tibarumal Jewellers was founded in Hyderabad, and within a few years, the founder had earned a reputation that most jewellers spend lifetimes chasing. His pieces adorned the city’s elite. He became, by most accounts, a favoured jeweller of the Nizam of Hyderabad himself — the ruler of one of the wealthiest princely states in India, whose personal jewellery collection drew on Golconda diamonds, Basra pearls, Colombian emeralds, and Burmese rubies.

Hyderabad in the 1920s was not a casual setting for a jeweller. The Nizams had spent two centuries cultivating a court aesthetic that fused Mughal, Deccan, and European sensibilities into something singular. Floral motifs, jadau settings, kundan inlay, and rose-cut diamonds were not decorative choices — they were a visual language. For a craftsman serious about gemstones, the city was an education in itself.

Tibarumal Gupta absorbed all of it. He travelled to Bombay, Jaipur, Gujarat, and Chennai to source pieces from different regional traditions, building a vocabulary of design that was deliberately pan-Indian rather than narrowly regional. That instinct — that jewellery should speak to many communities at once — would define the house for the next hundred years.

Three Generations, One Thread

The business passed from Tibarumal Gupta to his son Ram Bharos Gupta, who carried it through the post-independence decades when Hyderabad’s identity was shifting from a princely state to a modern city. Under Ram Bharos, the name Tibarumal became, in the words of the family, a guarantee of authenticity and quality — not a slogan, but a practical reality built through decades of consistent work.

The third generation arrived in the form of Pankaj Gupta, who took creative leadership in 1988. He introduced modern design ideas while keeping the house’s focus on exceptional gemstones. His instinct was to preserve the handcrafted approach — each piece worked by artisans trained in Tibarumal’s lineage — while expanding the aesthetic range to include contemporary and international influences. The firm also moved with Hyderabad’s own geography, shifting from Charminar to Basheerbagh and eventually to Banjara Hills, tracking the city’s commercial and cultural centre of gravity as it evolved.

Hyderabad’s unusual demographic mix helped. The city drew settlers from Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, meaning its jewellery buyers came with genuinely different tastes. A house that could serve Marwari, Telugu, Gujarati, and Sindhi customers without defaulting to one regional style had a structural advantage. Tibarumal had been built, from the very beginning, to do exactly that.

By the time the fourth generation came of age, the house had roughly a century of institutional knowledge behind it: sourcing relationships, artisan networks, design archives, and a customer base that had grown up with the brand. The question was what to do with all of it next.

Why Lab-Grown, and Why Now

The global lab-grown diamond market has been moving fast. Titan entered the category in late 2025 with its ‘beYon’ brand. GIVA’s lab-grown label Heer raised ₹530 crore in a Series C round. The category is no longer a niche — it is becoming a mainstream retail format, and heritage jewellery houses that have spent decades building trust are arguably better positioned to lead it than new entrants without that credibility.

For Tibarumal, the move into lab-grown diamonds was less a departure than a logical extension. The house had always been defined by its gemstones — the quality of the stone, the precision of the cut, the integrity of the setting. CVD-grown diamonds, which are chemically and optically identical to mined diamonds, simply offered a way to apply those same standards to a product that is ethically sourced, conflict-free, and accessible to a broader range of buyers.

In late 2025, Tibarumal Jewels launched Elevé Diamonds, its dedicated lab-grown diamond brand, led by fourth-generation scion Trishank Gupta alongside CEO Prajay Maganlal. The brand debuted with flagship stores in Kokapet, Kompally, and Warangal, with further expansion planned across Secunderabad, Coimbatore, Banjara Hills, and even the United States through 2026. Elevé has raised ₹14 crore in early funding and is in active discussions for a further ₹10 crore to support retail and technology-led growth.

Design direction at Elevé continues to be shaped by Pankaj Gupta, whose aesthetic sensibility runs through the collections. The brand’s offering includes the Nizam line — a direct reference to the royal craft tradition that Tibarumal first encountered in the 1920s — alongside Victorian and Polki interpretations and coloured stone pieces that reinterpret traditional forms for contemporary wear. Every piece is handcrafted by artisans trained in Tibarumal’s tradition. None are mass-produced.

The social dimension matters too. A portion of proceeds supports Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao and artisan welfare initiatives — a reflection of the brand’s stated belief that luxury and responsibility are not competing values.

What the Tibarumal Legacy Actually Means for a Diamond Buyer in 2026

Heritage in jewellery gets invoked constantly and means almost nothing most of the time. What makes the Tibarumal legacy different is that it is specific and verifiable: a founding year of 1920, a documented relationship with the Nizam’s court, three generations of named craftsmen and designers, and a fourth generation now building on that foundation with a clearly articulated product philosophy.

For someone buying a lab-grown diamond ring or a diamond necklace from Elevé Diamonds today, what that history provides is not nostalgia — it is a quality assurance mechanism. The artisans setting the stones were trained in a lineage that has been producing fine jewellery for over a century. The design language draws on a tradition that absorbed Mughal, Deccan, and European influences over generations. The IGI certification on each CVD diamond sits alongside craft knowledge that no certification alone can replicate.

Elevé’s diamonds are identical in chemical composition, optical properties, and hardness to mined diamonds. They are grown above ground using CVD technology, precision-cut, and certified to international standards. The difference is in how they are sourced: no mines, no conflict supply chains, no environmental extraction at scale. For buyers in Hyderabad who are increasingly thinking about what their purchases represent — not just what they look like — that matters.

The Charminar Collection, designed by Pankaj Gupta for the brand’s launch, made the connection between place and craft explicit. Hyderabad’s architecture, its layered history, its particular way of fusing the ornate with the functional — all of it translated into wearable form. It was a statement about where the brand comes from and what it intends to carry forward.

Browsing the Elevé Diamonds collections today, you can see that thread running through the designs: the attention to motif, the weight of the setting, the way coloured stones are used alongside white diamonds. These are not choices made by a design team working from trend reports. They are choices made by people who grew up inside a hundred-year-old conversation about what fine jewellery should be.

That is what a century of craftsmanship actually looks like when it is working.