Rajesh Exports Limited (History) – Story of becoming largest gold exporter

Mr. Jasvantrai Mehta was running a small business of supplying semi precious stones to the jewelers across south India. In the year 1978,  Mr Prashant Mehta, started assisting him in the business. Mr Rajesh Mehta was a meritorious student and a state rank holder  in schooling. In the year 1981, Mr Rajesh Mehta quit his education and started assisting his father in the business. Mr Rajesh Mehta and Mr Prashant Mehta had a vision in the jewellery business for which they wanted to start jewellery business. Their elder brother Mr Bipin Mehta gave them Rs. 1200 to start the business, this in effect  formed the initial capital of what is today a Rs. 20,000 crore company.

In the year 1982, both the brothers purchased silver jewellery from a silver jewellery manufacturer in Chennai, in which the manufacturer gave them some additional credit, they took this jewellery to Gujarat and sold it from house to house. From the proceeds of this sale they purchased silver jewellery from Rajkot and brought it to Bangalore and sold the same to the jewelers at Bangalore. The rotations and trips continued in this manner, due to their prompt conduct and hard working nature they were quickly able to build up an excellent reputation in the market, based on which they received good credit support from the manufacturers and wholesalers, which helped them to quickly scale up the business, by the year 1984, they had emerged as one of the leading silver jewellery wholesalers in south India.

With in a span of about three years they studied the jewellery market and understood that the  jewellery market was  completely unorganized and there were no standards in the jewellery industry. They visualized that they must try and create an organized sector in the industry and scale up quickly to build a large enterprise.  They also understood that to create an organized jewellery business, they needed to get into gold jewellery manufacturing and distribution. Those were the days of Gold Control Act. The Act was a draconian act, which was designed to discourage gold import and consumption in the country, because the entire gold requirement of the country was met by imports and India did not have a comfortable foreign exchange position at that time. As per the restrictions in the Act, setting up of a legal gold jewellery manufacturing   unit was practically impossible. It was primarily due to this reason that the entire jewellery industry in India at that time was in the unorganized sector and without any standards.

Inspite of all the impediments, the brothers were confident about achieving their vision of organizing the jewellery industry by meeting the end to end requirements in an organized manner and building an enterprise of mines to consumer. In the year 1985 they obtained a gold license under the Gold Control Act to deal in gold jewellery  and started a partnership firm called Rajesh Art jewelers. They started dealing in gold jewellery, by buying the jewellery from the unorganized sector and supplying the same to the jewelers, in a short period of time they were able to build a sizeable business and an impeccable reputation in the gold jewellery trade.  Their vision was clearly to establish a jewellery manufacturing facility, wherein they could control the quality, finish and the delivery schedules of the product. With  the Gold Control Act in place it was practically not possible to set up an organized jewellery manufacturing unit at that time, when they carefully studied the act, they found that an organized jewellery manufacturing unit was allowed to be set up if the entire production was exported.

Since they wanted to understand and master jewellery manufacturing, In the year 1989 they formed a partnership firm called Rajesh Exports with the main objective of manufacturing jewellery and exporting the same. In the year 1989, they set up the first organized gold  jewellery  manufacturing unit in a small place in Bangalore, by getting skilled workers from Mumbai to Bangalore. In the year 1989 they got their first export order from U.K. By following strict quality standards and innovative designs, Rajesh Exports was able to quickly scale up the manufacturing operations and exports.