Nobody really talks about what goes on before a piece of jewelry looks beautiful. The part that happens in cramped market lanes, under bad lighting, where someone’s turning a rough stone over in their hand trying to decide if it’s worth anything. That’s not the romantic version of the story. But it’s usually where the good stuff actually starts.
For SMGems India, it started in 1985.
That’s when Mr. Girdhari Sahu got into the raw cut emerald trade in Jaipur. No finished jewelry, no showroom — just stones, and the knowledge to know which ones mattered. He did that for over three decades. Quietly, consistently, building up the kind of supplier relationships and material expertise that you genuinely cannot shortcut your way into.
Then in 2018 his son Punit Mehraniya finished college and decided he wanted to do something with all of it.
Punit’s not just a businessman who happened to inherit a gem trade background. He trained as a jewelry designer. And what he saw in the family’s foundation — the sourcing network, the stone knowledge, the decades of credibility in Jaipur’s market — was raw material of a different kind. The kind you build a real brand out of.
So that’s what he did. SMGems India launched online, selling emerald and diamond jewelry, targeting buyers not just in India but internationally. USA, UK, Germany — markets where people are particular about what they spend on fine jewelry and aren’t easily impressed by packaging alone.
Here’s the part that surprises people when they first hear it: Punit has designed pieces for models who’ve worn them on actual red carpets. Not one country — across the US, UK, and Germany. That kind of placement doesn’t come from having a nice website. It comes from producing work that stylists, who look at jewelry all day every day, decide is genuinely worth putting in front of a camera.
The emerald focus makes sense when you know the backstory. Most jewelry brands buy finished or semi-finished stones from wholesalers. Punit’s working with material that’s been understood at the source for 40 years. When he’s designing a piece, he’s not guessing at what the stone can do — there’s a family’s worth of knowledge behind that selection.
Running it all online was a practical decision that turned out to be a smart one. A customer in Hamburg or Houston gets the same access as someone who could theoretically walk into a Jaipur showroom. The jewelry doesn’t get marked up through layers of retail. And the story behind the piece — which is genuinely interesting — actually reaches the person buying it.
What Punit built isn’t complicated to explain. Take a family that spent 40 years understanding emeralds better than almost anyone. Add one person with design training and a wider view of where that could go. Sell directly to the world. That’s it.
It’s working.
