CaratLane Stories – Multiple Visiting Cards

CaratLane was started in 2008 by Mithun Sacheti who ran a jewellery store called Jaipur Gems in Chennai and Srinivasa Gopalan who ran a software company called Lister Technologies.

Back in the day, in 2008, start-ups were so uncool and CaratLane was such an unknown that giving a CaratLane visiting card or a CaratLane reference on call/email would get zero response.

So we all had three sets of visiting cards. One from CL, and one each from Jaipur Gems and Lister Technologies. And the latter two would open more doors for us. Especially in Chennai. The CaratLane visiting card was a useless piece of paper.

Most people think getting customers to buy from an online jewellery company must have been the toughest part of starting CaratLane. It was equally hard to get vendors to work for us and people to join us as employees.

For a few months I was the only employee. We didn’t have an office yet. So I would go to the Lister office everyday and sit at the work station of whoever was absent that day. Often wondered – whether I made the right decision🥲.

It was a useful lesson in rejection and despair.

In the long run, it was possibly the best decision of my life 😊🙏🙏.

P.S – P.S – An old photo from back then. I had a full head of hair. I also wore loose, yellow coloured shirts back then 😀