As you enter the building premises of Venus Jewel in Surat, one is surprised by the simple décor with minimalistic approach, which is abode to the world’s leading solitaire manufacturing company. The entire building oozes ‘Simplicity’, and why not, the founder of this mammoth diamond empire, Sevantibhai Shah is a living example of ‘Simple Living and High Thinking’.
Born in 1948, to a family of moneylenders from Vadgam, a village near Palanpur in North Gujarat, Sevantibhai had no intention of getting into the diamond business, but being inclined towards education since his early childhood, he wished to study further. However, destiny had other plans. After completing his matriculation in 1965, he was in a dilemma whether to continue his further studies or join his brother in the diamond business. As luck would have it, Sevantibhai’s plan to get admission in college got delayed by a day, and realising the potential of the diamond business, he changed his mind and joined his brother Chhotubhai in the diamond business.
In the year 1969, along with his elder brother Ramnikbhai, he founded Venus Jewel. Thus, began the journey of the setting up of a mighty diamond empire in Surat. Right from the very beginning, Venus Jewel diamonds have been known for their finest quality, beauty and craftsmanship. Committed to perfection, today, even after over four decades in the diamond industry, Venus Jewel continues its legacy of offering its finely precision crafted solitaires through their indigenously developed and uniquely innovative services.
Sevantibhai not only talks of principles but he walks them too. In the initial years of his business he chalked out certain principles for himself, which he follows till date; one of them is – a balanced work and personal life. He says, “In the initial years, while I was struggling to settle my business, I had decided I would not compromise on my personal life while running my business. If my lunch hour is fixed at 12.30 in the afternoon then no big orders or an important meeting can stop me. Leading a disciplined life has helped me balance my personal and professional life.” Further he adds, “I rarely compromise, and follow my heart. If we know what we are doing is right, then there is nothing to fear.”
These principles reflect in his business as well, which works on the basis of doing the right things in the right way. Working in a sector which was largely unorganised, Sevantibhai followed all the laws and regulations and provided best working conditions to his employees without any compromise whatsoever. In 1977-78, after returning from a family organised pilgrimage, Sevantibhai was dissatisfied with the kind of work done by the contractors. The work quality was affected due to an all of a sudden boom in the industry. In order to retain quality, he decided to almost double the labour charges. Naturally, this played a vital role in improving the standards.
Aimed at maximising value addition, the company’s unique incentive-based wage system in his office and factory is also highly motivating in the sense that an employee’s rank goes higher in proportion to how better he has performed, thereby ensuring higher wages, and vice versa. This results in employees always trying to improve performance, thereby ultimately resulting in maximum performance all the time. Thus, employer, employee and the clients are all happy. When asked about this move, he says “I am not doing anything extraordinary; this is how a human being should behave with the other. You need to grow with the people, only then success is guaranteed. If my employees are happy it will reflect in their work and final output which will make my clients happy and thus my company will grow.”
Initially, the Indian diamond industry was known to manufacture small and cheap diamonds. Once at a function in Mumbai, a Belgium based diamantaire of Indian origin commented on India being unable to ever manufacture big and expensive diamonds. Hearing these words, Sevantibhai took it up as a challenge. He says, “We put in extra effort to make it work. For a long time we were the only players in this area of the business. Slowly, others started coming to this area. For the industry then, in order to hire talent who could process big and expensive diamonds, Venus Jewel was the only place, and they started taking away our talented workers. However, instead of getting worried I thought of finding a way to give my workers the best possible facilities, so that they would not be tempted by anything. And it worked; today the situation is such that I never face worker shortage.” Sevantibhai’s taking up this challenge has truly made Venus Jewel today, World Leaders in Solitaires.
Yet another more recent example of Sevantibhai’s conviction is Venus Jewel smoothly sailing through the 2008 recession, which also became the subject of study at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad. During this recessionary phase, the Indian diamond industry was going through a bad time; a lot of companies were cutting down on their workforce and most had indefinitely extended their Diwali vacations that year.
Hearing about the global situation from their friends who worked in other diamond companies as well as through the media, his employees, holding utmost respect for their beloved ‘Kaka’ came to him with the request to shut down the company for some time. When he refused to do so, next day they came again with the request to reduce their salaries, which also he refused. They then asked what they could do for the company. Sevantibhai advised them;
1. “Avoid any kind of damage”
2. “Cooperate with the Management to improve the standards”
In today’s world every company believes in advertising their products but Sevantibhai believes otherwise. He thinks mouth to mouth publicity is the best because it speaks of trust. He says, “It takes time, but in the long run it helps to stabilize business.” Venus Jewel doesn’t even have any offices outside India. Says Sevantibhai, “Because of this, we are extensively utilising Information Technology and neither have we needed to open an office abroad, nor has any family member required to settle there.” With offices only in Surat and Mumbai, Venus Jewel caters to their customers all over the world!
There have been a lot of people who have influenced Sevantibhai till today. Though he lost his father at the age of eight, he still remembers him being a man of principles and a hard worker. Another biggest influence has been his eldest brother late Shri Dalpatbhai and his wife. Dalpatbhai was like a father figure to Sevantibhai who took care of the entire family. He says, “I have seen my mother and my sister-in-law taking good care of every guest despite the absence of all modern facilities we enjoy today. But they never complained. Now, for me taking care of my guest is at my beck and call.” Another influence as Sevantibhai mentions is reading which has helped him a lot. Even today reading is his favourite hobby.
Today, at Venus Jewel all the employees from the upper management to the lowest rank employees eat in one place where food, not charged for separately, is provided from a keenly supervised hygienic canteen in the company premises. This kind of environment certainly spreads the feeling of oneness amongst the employees. Here, too, no one is allowed to waste anything. Sevantibhai says, “Even water, take only as much as you need. Never waste anything.”
Sevantibhai believes in the entire family staying together and at least taking one meal together. Even today, at least once in a year the entire family comes together for a family vacation. He says, “I see the reverse trend of staying together these days, which is good.” Ask him about were there any frictions in the family owing to some of his decisions, he says, “Thankfully, that is not an issue. We always have healthy and meaningful interactions, so coming to conclusions remains a smooth affair in our family. That is the secret of success of our business.”
At home, he enjoys performing the duties of a doting grandpa to his nephew Hiteshbhai’s children. The very simple man that he is, he best enjoys simple home cooked meals. Though he loves family outings at hotels, he completely prefers avoiding hotel food as well as any kind of junk food. He tells us that his wife Rasilaben makes all kinds of dishes; but he prefers homemade pani-puri. Krinaben, Hiteshbhai’s wife is also very much inclined to follow in Rasilaben’s footsteps.
He is a people’s person and loves meeting people at social events. He likes sharing his experiences with people at various platforms. However, he still is not comfortable with penning down his experiences as he feels there is still a lot to learn for him. Besides his beloved city Surat, he loves Antwerp.
Venus Jewel has many firsts associated with its name thanks to one man’s clarity of vision i.e. Sevantibhai. His constant endeavour to achieve the best in whatever he does has led to many innovative ideas that are still in practice at the company. In 1973, the company established its unique performance based motivational pay system aimed at getting best results. The company believes in complete adherence to all applicable statutory regulations, but in addition to offering various staff welfare measures, it voluntarily also constituted in 2001, its Superannuation (pension) scheme for all employees, wherein the entire contribution is done by the company. It developed an efficient and ethical work culture, thereby setting new benchmarks for the entire diamond industry. Today, Venus Jewel’s fully integrated, centrally air conditioned, IT enabled manufacturing unit and office in Surat, an eight-storied structure spread over 2,60,000 sq. ft., is at par with some of the best facilities in the world.
Venus Jewel embraced Information Technology (IT) in an age when computerised business was not known to the diamond industry in India. In 1987, the company started using IT to enable its business to become more transparent, flexible, controlled and predictable. Today, as Sevantibhai puts it, “Our major business happens through online orders”. Though Venus Jewel was manufacturing large and expensive diamonds, in 1988, it started fully manufacturing ‘2 carat’ and up category diamonds, which brought the concept of high value diamond processing to the Indian subcontinent. It was the company’s extensive research which gave birth to their Venus Grading System® (VGS®); coupled with the company’s pioneering the Single Piece Packaging system, this gave a new meaning to the words ‘Transparency’ and ‘Consumer Confidence’.
In 1997, the company launched its online portal – www.venusjewel.com – for online trade of loose diamonds, a pioneering move once again for the entire industry. So customer focused is the company that it even shifted to hosting its own in-house web server, so as to be able to provide its entire inventory online on real time basis, just for the convenience of its online buyers. Since about the last decade or so, Venus Jewel, through its iterative R&D process has been continually coming up with uniquely innovative online business features, which were never imagined possible, much to the delight of their customers.
Worthy of mention amongst these, are the Preferred Diamond Selection (PDS) system – a novel feature that allows all of the company’s online customers equal and unbiased opportunity to competitively bid for diamonds freshly uploaded in stock and the Look & Bid (L&B) system – similar to the PDS, this is an online bidding system, where customers can physically examine diamonds, and then place bids on them. The company has also uniquely used the extensive detailing of its grading system parameters to come up with its Match Pair selection system – possibly the most efficient, quick and foolproof method of digitally selecting precision matched diamond pairs. The list is big, and the long standing lineage of Venus Jewel’s innovative streak can be traced back to as early as 2003, when they had launched their Confirmed Order Requirement (COR) system designed to allow customers to pre-specify their precise diamond requirements as well as delivery schedules, exactly as per their choice and desire!
If you ask him about what are his plans for his future, then one would be surprised by his answer. He says, “I don’t set targets. One must have clarity of thought to do the right things at the right time with the right principles. If you do this, success is bound to happen.” Going further, he wants his company to continue its relentless pursuit of continually refining itself over and over again, and eagerly looks forward to the family’s third generation entering the business and bringing in new ideas.
However, he has big dreams for his city, Surat. He wants Surat to have better air connectivity. He wants the city to grow and develop into a world class city of international standards. Feeling gratefully indebted he intends to do all that he can, to bring growth to Surat. He has no complaints and not even a personal dream. He says, “When you do anything out of compulsion then it becomes difficult to perform but when you enjoy doing certain things, it gives you satisfaction and you are never bothered by it. For me serving my people is the biggest satisfaction.”
Ask him is there any retirement plan on the cards, and he firmly says “No.” For Sevantibhai, work is like worship. Each word of his is a word of wisdom, drawn from real life experiences. He doesn’t believe in stopping anywhere. Even at the age of 66, he has a lot of plans which he really is shy of talking and believes in putting them in action first. For a man like Sevantibhai Shah, a living legend, Robert Frost’s lines are apt – “But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep!”
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