JB Insights
WGC REPORT: India gold market update: Seasonal strength
Highlights
- Gold prices soften from record highs yet remain supported
- Domestic prices slide back into discount
- Gold demand, led by investment buying, strengthened during the festive period, but softened thereafter
- Gold ETFs continue strong momentum in October with record inflows and new investors
- Gold imports soar in October, despite the price rally
Looking ahead
- The busy wedding season over the coming months (November–March), with a high number of anticipated weddings, is expected to support jewellery demand.
- Investment interest in gold is likely to persist amid broadly bullish sentiment around gold.
Prices retreat from peak, but maintain firm trend
International gold price1 recorded a sharp rally in October, hitting its 50th record high of the year during the month. Although price eased by about 7% from the peak, it still ended October 5% higher at US$4,011.5/oz. The momentum carried into November, with price up nearly 3% m-t-d as of 19 November. This sustained performance has lifted gold’s y-t-d gains to 58%.
Our Gold Return Attribution Model (GRAM) suggests that recent movements in international gold prices have been driven by geopolitical risk, higher implied volatility, a stronger US dollar, as well as momentum and evolving interest-rate expectations.
Domestic gold prices have largely tracked the international trend but have delivered even stronger returns, recording 63% y-t-d growth. The higher domestic gains are attributed to the 3.3% depreciation of the Indian rupee. Domestic gold prices, which had mostly traded at par with, or at a premium to, the international price over the past two months, shifted to a discount following the peak festive demand period (Chart 2), with the m-t-d2 discount averaging US$18/oz.
Festive demand shines, tapers after
Festive demand around Diwali and Dhanteras3 – India’s peak gold-buying occasions – was reportedly strong despite record-high prices, according to feedback from industry stakeholders. Market participants consistently highlighted that the strength was driven primarily by investment-oriented buying, particularly bars and coins, with some noting volume nearly doubling from a year ago. E-commerce platforms also saw solid sales,4 and digital gold purchases rose too. Unified Payments Interface (UPI) data shows digital gold purchases increasing 62% m/m to INR22bn (US$259mn) in October.5 In tonnage terms, the volume rose 45% m/m to 1.8t.
Jewellery sales also held up well during the festive period, with retailers reporting healthy sales across both single-store and large multi-store formats, the latter benefitting from brand trust and promotional initiatives. Although jewellery volumes were softer due to elevated prices, the overall value of sales remained healthy, reportedly up by around a quarter y/y for many, reflecting resilient festive buying sentiment.
Post-Diwali, demand has reportedly softened. Industry feedback suggests market activity in November has been subdued, despite the onset of the wedding season. Jewellery buying is largely wedding-driven, while investment demand persists. Supply of old gold into the market has reportedly moderated. Trade participants attribute this to consumers having exhausted surplus gold for immediate needs and now choosing to hold onto jewellery in expectation of further price gains. Jewellers remain cautiously optimistic that the ongoing wedding season (November–March) will boost jewellery sales, given the expected large number of weddings.
ETFs: persistent strong inflows
October marked the sixth consecutive month of strong inflows into Indian gold ETFs, emphasising the growing appeal of gold as an investment asset in various forms.
Net inflows for the month were INR77bn (US$876mn), a modest 8% decline from the previous month, largely in line with our estimates.7 Despite this moderation, the figure remained significantly higher than the y-t-d average of INR28bn (US$315mn). The dip was primarily due to a sharp rise in redemptions, which hit a record INR21bn (US$244mn). This surge in redemptions was likely driven by profit-taking following the rally in gold prices. Gross inflows for the month, however, set a record at INR99bn (US$11bn). The exceptional rise in gold prices likely drew investor attention, contributing to the strong inflows, while ongoing safe-haven demand further reinforced this trend. Net inflows have continued into November, reaching INR24bn (US$269mn) during the first 17 days of the month.8
The first 10 months of 2025 have been particularly strong for gold ETFs, with cumulative inflows totalling INR276bn (US$3.1bn) – the highest annual inflows on record. This surpasses the total inflows from March 2020 to December 2024. This unprecedented demand has propelled the assets of these funds to historic levels. As per AMFI data, as of end October, the assets under management (AUM) of gold ETFs climbed to a record INR1,021bn (US$11.5bn) and gold holdings rose to 83.5t,9 nearly a third of which were added in 2025 alone.
The growing interest in gold ETFs was further evidenced by the increase in new investors. In October, a record 911,000 new accounts (folios) were added, bringing the total number of folios to 9.57mn, reflecting a 49% increase y-t-d.
In addition to the strong performance of existing gold ETFs, the market saw the launch of a new gold ETF in October,10 bringing the total number of gold ETFs in India to 23.
Imports surge to new peak in October despite price rally
Gold imports registered a sharp surge in October, marking the fourth consecutive month of growth in both value and volume terms. Notably, the increase occurred despite domestic gold prices touching record highs – rising 60% y/y and 11% m/m11 – indicating resilient domestic demand. In value terms, imports climbed to US$14.7bn, the highest on record, translating into a ~200% y/y and 53% m/m increase. Import volumes also rose substantially, with inflows estimated at 137–142t, compared with 102t in September and 61t a year earlier. The October surge was largely driven by seasonal factors, i.e. the Diwali festivities and the onset of the wedding season.
On a y-t-d basis, gold imports have totalled US$51bn, an increase of 16% y/y. In contrast, the import volumes, estimated at around 559t, are down 12% from a year ago, reflecting the impact of elevated gold prices.
JB Insights
The Woman Wearing The Diamond Was Never The One The Ad Was Talking To
Disha Shah, Founder & Designer, DiAi Designs Says That The Brands That Shift From “She Deserves It” to “She Chose It” Won’t Just Win Cultural Relevance – They’ll Own The Future Of Jewellery Marketing.
Indian jewellery advertising has always centred the woman. She has been the face of every campaign, draped in gold, luminous at the occasion, receiving the gift with practised grace. What she rarely was, until recently, was the intended audience.
The creative language of the category was built around a genuine economic reality. For decades, the buyer in Indian fine jewellery was the patriarch, the husband, the father, the family elder making a financial decision on behalf of a woman whose purchasing autonomy was limited. Advertising followed the money. The gift reveal, the bridal close-up, the family approval shot: these were not arbitrary creative choices. They reflected who held the purse strings, and they became so embedded in the category’s visual grammar that they outlasted the conditions that created them by an entire generation.
That structural reality has now reversed. Jewellery purchases now extend beyond weddings and festivals to daily wear, driven by financially independent working women. The self-purchasing woman is no longer an emerging segment; she is the category’s fastest-growing buyer, approaching the decision differently from the buyer the industry originally designed itself around. She is not waiting for an occasion. She is not waiting for someone to present a box. She researched the piece, chose it, and bought it because she wanted it.
The advertising, for the most part, has not caught up.
Some brands are beginning to recognise this. CaratLane’s #WearYourWins movement and Tanishq’s sustained push toward the “woman as decision-maker” are meaningful steps. But what makes these campaigns commercially smart is not just cultural alignment. Research from Harvard Business School finds that women systematically provide less favourable assessments of their own performance and potential than equally performing men. This documented self-promotion gap persists even when women know they have outperformed others. Campaigns that actively celebrate female self-recognition are not just filling a creative gap. They are responding to a behavioural reality that has gone largely unaddressed in the category. The brands doing this well are not being progressive for their own sake. They are being accurate about who their buyer is and what she needs to hear.
Look at the Women’s Day 2026 campaigns across the industry. The conversation is clearly starting to pivot. Brands are finally stepping away from the usual gifting tropes and reframing jewellery as a tool for personal milestones and self-expression. But these remain exceptions. The dominant campaign language of Indian jewellery- the gesture, the reveal, the woman being seen rather than deciding- has not structurally changed.
The media mix tells the same story. Titan leaned heavily on television in FY25, with ad volume surging to 77% of its mix, a broadcast medium built for household reach rather than the individual, financially independent woman who now represents the category’s fastest-growing buyer.
Meanwhile, digitally native BlueStone achieved 50% of online jewellery ad volumes on a budget nearly ten times smaller than Titan’s. The channel that reaches the self-purchasing woman directly is delivering outsized results on a fraction of the spend. The implication for where the industry should be directing its creative attention is fairly clear.
Consider what a brief genuinely written for this buyer would look like. No occasion in the shot. No second person in the frame presents anything. The opening line is not “for the woman who deserves to be celebrated.” It is “she saw it, she wanted it, she bought it.” The product earns its place not through sentiment but through desire. The copy does not explain why she is worth it. It assumes she already knows. That is not a tonal adjustment. It is a fundamentally different creative architecture, and very few briefs in this category have been written that way.
The LGD category has a specific opportunity here that established houses do not. Without decades of legacy campaign language to protect, an independent designer in this space can build advertising from a blank page, one written entirely around the woman who is actually making the purchase. The brief does not have to accommodate inherited assumptions about who the buyer is or what she is waiting for. That is not a small advantage. In a category where the dominant creative language was built around a buyer who is no longer the one making the decision, starting without that inheritance may be the most powerful creative position available.
The woman wearing the diamond has always been visible. What is changing now is who gets to decide. The brands that build their creative around that reality will not just be more culturally relevant. They will be better positioned for every year that follows. The advertising has not caught up yet. But the buyer already has.
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