Shraddha Kapoor joined Palmonas as co-founder in March 2024 as the demi-fine jewellery startup expanded rapidly.
While Indian jewellery brands were split between temple jewellery for occasions and luxury fine jewellery for investment, a Pune-based startup saw the entire everyday wear market sitting unaddressed and then got a Bollywood co-founder to help them own it.
Topic tags: Celebrity Startups • Jewellery D2C • Indian Startup Story • Demi-Fine Jewellery • Founder Stories
The Rs 55 crore raise from Vertex Ventures is not a celebrity vanity round. Vertex Ventures is a Temasek-backed institutional VC firm that does not write cheques on the basis of social following. The investment reflects a genuine commercial thesis on a gap in Indian jewellery retail that Palmonas was the first to articulate clearly.
The Story: Demi-Fine Jewellery for Everyday Indian Women
Palmonas was founded in Pune by Pallavi Mohadikar before Shraddha Kapoor joined as co-founder in March 2024 (Inc42, September 2024). Pune-based jewellery startup Palmonas roped in Kapoor as its new co-founder in March 2024. Incorporated by Pallavi Mohadikar, the main aim of this company is to provide stylish, long-lasting jewellry at an affordable price for everyday people.
The product category is specific and deliberately positioned: demi-fine jewellery. Not costume jewellery that turns green after a week. Not fine jewellery priced at several lakhs for investment-grade gold. Demi-fine sits between the two real materials, typically vermeil gold or sterling silver with high-quality plating, priced between Rs 1,000 and Rs 10,000, designed for daily wear rather than special occasions.
This gap is genuinely underserved in India. The country’s jewellery market has historically been structured around either high-volume low-quality fashion accessories or high-value gold and diamond pieces purchased as financial instruments or for weddings. The everyday woman who wants to wear something real-looking, durable, and priced for frequent purchase has had few credible options from Indian brands.
Palmonas built for precisely that customer, and Shraddha Kapoor’s co-founding brought two things the brand needed to win that customer faster: the visual identity credibility that a fashion-forward Bollywood actress provides in a jewellery category where aspiration drives the purchase decision, and the social distribution reach that made customer acquisition more efficient than paid advertising alone.
People Also Ask
What is Palmonas? Palmonas is a demi-fine jewellery brand co-founded by Shraddha Kapoor and Pallavi Mohadikar in Pune, offering stylish, long-lasting jewellery at accessible prices designed for everyday wear rather than special occasions (Inc42, September 2024).
Who founded Palmonas? Palmonas was originally founded by Pallavi Mohadikar. Shraddha Kapoor joined as co-founder in March 2024, bringing brand equity, creative input, and social distribution to the business (Inc42, September 2024).
How much has Palmonas raised? Palmonas raised Rs 55 crore from Vertex Ventures in 2025 to expand its jewellery collections and open 100 new stores across India.
What type of jewellery does Palmonas sell? Palmonas sells demi-fine jewellery real material pieces using vermeil gold and sterling silver, priced accessibly for everyday wear and positioned between low-quality costume jewellery and high-value fine jewellery (Inc42, September 2024).
Who invested in Palmonas? Vertex Ventures, a Temasek-backed institutional VC firm, led the Rs 55 crore funding round in 2025, reflecting institutional confidence in the brand’s commercial thesis rather than only its celebrity association.
Quick Facts
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | Pre-2024 (Pallavi Mohadikar) | Inc42, September 2024 |
| Celebrity co-founder joined | March 2024 | Inc42, September 2024 |
| Co-founders | Pallavi Mohadikar, Shraddha Kapoor | Inc42, September 2024 |
| HQ | Pune, India | Inc42, September 2024 |
| Funding raised (2025) | Rs 55 crore | VygrNews, December 2025 |
| Lead investor | Vertex Ventures (Temasek-backed) | VygrNews, December 2025 |
| Expansion plan | 100 new stores | VygrNews, December 2025 |
| Category | Demi-fine jewellery, everyday wear | Bollywood Shaadis, May 2025 |
How Palmonas Stands Apart from Other Celebrity Jewellery Brands
Institutional VC backing validates the commercial thesis Vertex Ventures is not the kind of investor that backs celebrity brands for marketing value. It backs businesses with real unit economics and a defensible market position. The Rs 55 crore Vertex investment signals that Palmonas passed institutional diligence on its product, pricing, and market sizing, not just on Shraddha Kapoor’s follower count.
The operator-founder model again outperforms pure celebrity licensing Pallavi Mohadikar built the product, the supply chain, and the initial customer base before Shraddha joined. The brand was real before the celebrity arrived. Shraddha’s co-founding accelerated distribution and brand visibility, but did not create the business from nothing, which is why the Rs 55 crore can be spent on store expansion rather than on building the product credibility from scratch.
100-store expansion plan signals an omnichannel thesis The Rs 55 crore will fund 100 new stores, an offline expansion that follows the same logic visible in D2C brands across India in 2025 and 2026: digital-first proof of concept, followed by physical retail expansion once the brand identity is established. For jewellery specifically, the offline channel matters more than in most D2C categories because touch, try-on, and the retail experience are genuine purchase decision drivers that images on a phone screen cannot fully replace.
The Risks
Market education for demi-fine in India. The demi-fine category is well established in Western markets (Missoma, Mejuri) but not yet mainstream in India. Palmonas is partly building a new customer behaviour the habit of spending Rs 3,000 to Rs 8,000 on everyday jewellery rather than capturing an existing one.
Store expansion execution risk. Opening 100 stores across India with Rs 55 crore requires disciplined capital allocation, location selection, and store operations management. For a D2C-native brand, the operational complexity of a physical retail network is genuinely different from what the founding team has built so far.
Competition from established jewellery platforms. Tanishq, BlueStone, and CaratLane all operate in adjacent segments with significantly larger brand recognition and distribution. As Palmonas scales, the question of how it maintains its everyday-accessible positioning against brands with more marketing muscle and broader customer recognition becomes more pressing.
Key Takeaways
Palmonas was founded in Pune by Pallavi Mohadikar and joined by Shraddha Kapoor as co-founder in March 2024, building India’s most prominent demi-fine everyday jewellery brand (Inc42, September 2024).
The brand’s demi-fine positioning targets a genuine gap in Indian jewellery retail everyday wear at real-material quality and accessible prices between costume jewellery at the bottom and fine jewellery at the top.
The founding aim is to provide stylish, long-lasting jewellery at an affordable price for everyday people a customer brief that addresses a real unmet need in a market historically structured around occasions and investment rather than daily wear.
Shraddha Kapoor brought brand credibility and social distribution efficiency to a business that Pallavi Mohadikar had already built the product and supply chain for, mirroring the operator-led, celebrity-anchored model that has consistently outperformed pure celebrity licensing in India’s D2C space.
The Bottom Line
Palmonas is the most commercially credible jewellery startup in Indian celebrity brand history, measured by the quality of its institutional investor and the specificity of the gap it is filling. Vertex Ventures backing a Rs 55 crore round is not a celebrity cheque it is an institutional bet that demi-fine everyday jewellery has a large addressable market in India and that Palmonas has the product and distribution positioning to capture it. The 100-store expansion plan will test whether the brand’s offline execution can match the conviction its investors have placed on paper.
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