National News
Gold Loans Continued To Expand In The 12 Months Up To May 2026, Up By 105 Percent
The Remarkable Momentum In Gold Lending Stands In Contrast To The Moderation Witnessed Across Several Major Retail Credit Categories.
Gold-backed lending has emerged as one of the fastest-growing segments within the banking system, sustaining triple-digit growth through May 2026 and reshaping the composition of retail credit. According to the latest sectoral data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), loans against gold jewellery expanded by 105.5% year-on-year to approximately Rs 5.1 lakh crore, significantly outperforming the broader personal loan portfolio, which grew 15.4% to ₹70.2 lakh crore.
The remarkable momentum in gold lending stands in contrast to the moderation witnessed across several major retail credit categories. Housing loans, which continue to constitute the largest share of personal lending, recorded growth of 10.9%, while credit card outstanding increased by a modest 1.3%. Consumer durable financing contracted by 2.6%, highlighting a broader cooling in discretionary borrowing.
As a result, gold loans have assumed a larger role within the personal credit ecosystem. Their share in total personal loans rose to 7.3% in May 2026, compared with 4.1% a year earlier and just 1.97% in May 2024. Over the past two years, this represents an increase of 5.4 percentage points. Notably, gold-backed lending contributed nearly 28% of the incremental expansion in personal loans between May 2025 and May 2026, despite accounting for a relatively modest proportion of the overall portfolio.
The moderation in traditional retail segments also weighed on the overall share of personal loans within total bank credit, which declined to 32.6% from 33.3% a year earlier. Other personal loan categories grew by 12.5%, remaining below the banking system’s aggregate credit growth of 17.7%.
National News
Lukson Builds India’s Sustainability Benchmark For LGD With A Fully Solar Powered Manufacturing Facility
Lukson Combines A Solar Powered CVD Facility With 500 Reactors, Internationally Certified Stones and A Group Legacy Of Over 1 Lakh Trees Planted Across Gujarat
As India’s lab grown diamond market accelerates, most brands in the category lean on a single claim, that a diamond grown in a lab is kinder to the planet than one pulled out of it. Lukson, the vertically integrated lab grown diamond jewellery brand from the JK Star Group, is going several steps further, backing that claim at the infrastructure level with one of the few fully solar powered diamond growing operations in the country.
At the heart of this story is the Group’s CVD diamond growing facility in Surat, Gujarat, operated under AVP Star, the JK Star Group’s lab grown diamond manufacturing arm. The facility runs entirely on solar power drawn from the Group’s dedicated solar plant in Navsari, Gujarat, and houses 500 CVD reactors, where every Lukson diamond begins its journey as a tiny seed. From growing and coring to slicing, laser processing, cutting, polishing and grading, every stage is handled in house, giving the brand an unbroken chain of quality control and traceability that few players in the category can match.
The commitment extends well beyond the factory. The Group has planted over 1 lakh trees across Gujarat as part of its environmental programme, while its philanthropic arm, the JK Star Charitable Trust, has contributed over 10 percent of net profits from all five group companies since 2019 towards education, healthcare, tree plantation, environmental sustainability and food distribution.
The stones themselves carry independent proof. Lukson’s lab grown diamonds are certified by leading international laboratories including IGI, GIA and GCAL, with an inventory of around 40,000 certified stones held across the Group’s New York and India offices.
Vedant Lukhi, Co-Founder, Lukson Who leads the Group’s CVD diamond growing technology and operations, Said:

“Lab grown does not automatically mean sustainable. A diamond grown in a lab still needs energy, and if that energy comes from fossil fuels, the sustainability story falls apart”
“That is why we invested in making our facility solar powered. When the factory growing your diamond runs on the sun, sustainability stops being a marketing line and becomes something you can walk into, measure and verify. That is the standard we believe the entire industry should be held to.”
Anand Lukhi, CEO and Co-Founder, Lukson Said:
“For us, sustainability was never an afterthought or a trend to ride, it is the inheritance we chose to build on.”

“We come from a family that has spent over three decades in diamonds, and when we imagined Lukson, we were clear that the next generation of Indian consumers deserves jewellery they can feel genuinely good about, in how it looks, how it is priced and how it is made. Our customers should never have to choose between beauty and responsibility. With Lukson, they get both, backed by proof at every step from the reactor to the retail shelf.”
Launched in January 2025 by Anand Lukhi and Vedant Lukhi as the JK Star Group’s first D2C venture, Lukson brings this manufacturing depth directly to the modern Indian consumer, offering certified lab grown diamond jewellery crafted in 9KT, 14KT and 18KT gold, backed by BIS hallmarking and a lifetime buyback policy. The brand retails across ten cities including Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Jaipur and Guwahati, alongside Amazon, AJIO, Pernia’s Pop Up Shop, Eternz and lukson.co, with try at home and video shopping convenience across key cities.
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