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Outstanding gold-backed loans  surge by  128% from a year earlier

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India’s appetite for borrowing against gold is reshaping the country’s credit landscape. Outstanding gold-backed loans have surged 128% from a year earlier, crossing Rs.4 lakh crore ($48 billion) for the first time, according to data from the Reserve Bank of India. As of Jan. 31, loans secured by gold jewellery stood at Rs.4,00,517 crore, marking one of the fastest expansions in retail credit in recent years.

The boom in gold loans has helped propel overall non-food bank credit growth to 14.4% year-on-year. Personal loans now account for 34.5% of total bank lending, outpacing other segments and underscoring a broader shift toward consumer-driven credit expansion

Gold loans alone contributed roughly 9% of incremental bank credit during the period. Between January 2024 and January 2026, outstanding gold-backed credit rose by nearly Rs.3.1 lakh crore—an increase of about 338% over two years—more than quadrupling the size of the portfolio.

Two factors are driving the surge. First, gold prices have climbed roughly 152% over the past two years, increasing the collateral value of household holdings. Second, regulatory guidance requiring banks to classify loans secured by gold explicitly as gold loans has sharpened reporting and accelerated balance-sheet growth in the segment.

The trend highlights a distinctive feature of India’s financial system: households’ vast stock of physical gold, long viewed primarily as a store of wealth, is increasingly being mobilized as collateral for formal credit.

While personal lending and credit to nonbank financial companies within the services sector continue to expand rapidly, industrial credit remains uneven. Loans to micro, small and medium enterprises are growing steadily, but borrowing by large corporations has stayed relatively muted.

Since March 21, 2025, banks have added Rs.21.8 lakh crore to their non-food loan books, translating into 12% growth for the financial year to date. Yet it is gold—rather than factories or infrastructure—that is emerging as one of the most dynamic engines of India’s current credit cycle.

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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

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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:

Vedant Lukhi

“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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