Lab Grown Diamond Brand Aukera Raises Rs 90 Crore To Expand Stores Across India Rapidly
Aukera has raised Rs 90 crore just months after a 15 million dollar round, fuelling an expansion from 13 to 35 stores as India’s lab grown diamond market races toward an 11.6 billion dollar opportunity investors are clearly eager to fund early.
Highlights:
- Aukera has raised Rs 90 crore led by existing investor Alteria Capital, alongside InnoVen and Lighthouse Canton
- The round comes less than a year after Aukera raised 15 million dollars led by Peak XV Partners
- The company has grown its store count from 13 to 35 over the past year
- India’s lab grown diamond market is projected to grow from 2.8 billion to 11.6 billion dollars by 2035
- Cofounder Kumar Saurabh says the category’s eventual leader will need to invest at least Rs 1000 crore
Diamonds have always sold on a story as much as on carbon and pressure, and for decades that story belonged entirely to mined stones. A new generation of Indian jewellery brands is betting that story can be rewritten.
Aukera, a premium lab grown diamond jewellery brand, has raised Rs 90 crore in fresh funding led by existing investor Alteria Capital, with participation from InnoVen Capital, Lighthouse Canton, and an unnamed bank. The capital will go toward new stores, product design, and omnichannel infrastructure.
Founded in 2023 by Lisa Mukhedkar and Kumar Saurabh, Aukera entered a category that has moved from niche curiosity to mainstream contender remarkably quickly. Lab grown diamonds share identical physical and chemical properties with mined stones, but at a meaningfully lower price, a combination that has appealed to younger consumers wanting bigger, higher quality stones without the traditional price tag.
Aukera has deliberately positioned itself at the premium end rather than competing on discount pricing, backing that positioning with actor Taapsee Pannu as brand ambassador.
The pace of this fundraising is itself notable. This round, worth just over 10 million dollars, arrives less than twelve months after the company closed a considerably larger 15 million dollar equity round led by Peak XV Partners, with Fireside Ventures, Sparrow Capital, and Prath Ventures also participating.
That earlier round’s investor list looks noticeably different from this one. InnoVen Capital, known specifically for venture debt, alongside Lighthouse Canton and an unnamed bank, feature this time, while Peak XV and Fireside Ventures are both absent. This composition suggests the latest round leans more toward debt financing than a straightforward equity raise, worth keeping in mind rather than reading the headline figure as identical validation to a pure equity round.
The growth numbers are genuinely fast moving regardless of structure. Aukera has expanded its company owned store count from 13 to 35 over the past year, moving beyond Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Delhi NCR into Pune, Lucknow, Dehradun, and Visakhapatnam.
Mukhedkar frames the company’s thesis around trust rather than price. This category will not be won on discounting, she argues, but on trust, quality, and brand, and the fresh capital lets Aukera extend that promise to more cities, faster.
Cofounder Kumar Saurabh offered an even more striking view of what leadership in this category will actually require.
He believes the eventual market leader will need to invest at least Rs 1,000 crore, as the broader mining dominated industry resets to recognise the permanence of grown diamonds as a category.
That is a notably large figure for a company that, across two rounds within a year, has raised a combined total still well short of it.
The broader opportunity is substantial. According to Vantage Market Research, India’s lab grown diamond market was valued at approximately 2.8 billion dollars in 2025, projected to reach 11.6 billion dollars by 2035, a compound annual growth rate of roughly 15.4 percent.
Aukera is far from alone in chasing this opportunity. Established conglomerate Titan has entered the category directly with its own brand, Beyond, bringing considerably larger resources and an already trusted retail name into direct competition with younger, venture backed entrants.
There are reasonable questions worth holding alongside the excitement. Rapid store expansion, nearly tripling in a single year, carries real execution risk, since jewellery depends heavily on the kind of in person trust building that’s difficult to replicate consistently at pace.
The presence of debt oriented investors this round is also worth watching, since debt needs servicing regardless of how quickly the business grows. Saurabh’s own framing, that the category leader will need at least Rs 1,000 crore, is itself an acknowledgment that Aukera’s current funding still falls meaningfully short of what its own leadership believes victory requires.
Whether Aukera converts this round into durable leadership, or finds itself in a prolonged, capital hungry race against increasingly well funded rivals including a legacy giant like Titan, will depend less on this announcement and more on whether its trust first positioning holds as the category matures into a genuinely crowded mainstream segment.
