Four young engineers in Surat, Gujarat have developed a mobile application for small and medium scale businessmen dealing in diamonds and jewellery. ‘Diamond Merchant’, the app, was launched two weeks ago for Android and IOS phones in Gujarati and English languages. It has recorded about 4,000 registrations and 65,580 carats of polished and rough diamonds have been placed on the app for sale.
Mechanical engineers Chintan Gujarati, Riten Gabani, with Manoj Miyani who is an electrical engineer and Chintan Gopani, a computer engineer, collectively worked on the application for two years, as per a report in the local media. They ran four pilots with the fifth being successful. Gabani said the diamond industry people are connected through various WhatsApp groups. “We first started a group called Tamaru Potanu Hira Bazaar on Facebook where we put up promotional videos of this application and its benefits,” he said. “Many people like it and we reached out to many more in the industry through our family, relatives and friends.” Gabani also pointed out that demand went down because of the COVID-19 lockdown. “Now we are getting feedback from the users.”
Recently, a diamond trader sold 15 carats of rough diamonds, worth Rs 3 lakh, and another trader sold polished packets of 28 carats. Through the app, users have access to markets of eight countries. Moreover, the user can launch his own market by creating a group for private dealings. “Small traders and businessmen can reach out to customers in the diamond trading hubs of Gujarat and Mumbai nationally as as well as internationally. The seller and purchaser get new business partners,” Gujarati said. “We have made it free for the industry people to register. After downloading the application, one has to put in company address, permanent and present address to register. The user can put a post under different heads, including polished market, rough market, my own market, message, payment transactions and news on the diamond market.” he explained.
