SPREADING JOY
How Joyalukkas Became the World’s Favourite Jeweller
By Joy Alukkas with Thomas Scaria &
Nidhi Jain
Harper Business
Rs699 Pp 255
This is the story of a man of grit, a businessman with self-respect and a gold jeweller who is made of steel. Sample this: a 45-year-old man, read Indian, in modest attire visits a car showroom in Dubai. The salesman asks him ‘What do you want?’ and the man points to a Rolls Royce Silver Seraph. The salesman probably recognises the visitor by the clothes that he wore and decides that the luxury car is not meant for him. He then directs the visitor to the next-door Mitsubishi showroom. The Indian sticks to his guns and writes the cheque for the Rolls Royce. He does not stop there. He displays the top-end luxury car for a raffle promotion. Yes, this man was none other than Joy Alukkas, who carved a niche for himself in the business of jewellery.
Spreading Joy: How Joyalukkas Became the World’s Favourite Jeweller’ by Joy Alukkas makes a fascinating reading – of his childhood in the ‘gold town’ Thrissur, Kerala, the happiness of running a family business, the tears of split, betrayal by a trusted family friend and brand building with innovation and determination.
Spreading Joy is co-authored by Thomas Scaria, a chartered accountant and director of Joy Alukkas International, and Nidhi Jain, a writer, broadcaster, TV producer and media consultant. The book provides
rare insights into the highly fragmented and unorganised business and the challenges that Joy overcomes hurdle after hurdle with his entrepreneurial skills.
For someone who was virtually dismissed as useless in business, the success of building the Joyalukkas International chain has not come the easy way. ‘Joy has no head for business,’ his brothers would often say and it became a byword in his family. This was seen as a major flaw in his character. But Joy’s success as a self-made businessman proved how terribly wrong his brothers were.
One message that is clear from Joy’s life is that you may hold your head high, but it must be with all humility and with no rancour or ill-will, come what the adverse situations are. Joy describes in detail his early days in the UAE, where he had gone in 1986 in search of his personal El Dorado and mentions how he got help from George Verghese, proprietor of Chemmanur Jewellers, and old family associate, who also hailed from Thrissur. Varghese was about 10 years senior to Joy and had a shop in Dubai. But he advised Joy to start business in Abu Dhabi since the gold retail price was significantly higher there than in Dubai. Joy got the point, as margins in jewellery retail are from two components – the profit on making charges and the price of gold itself. On both the counts, Abu Dhabi appeared to be a better option and thus was Alukkas’ first store was opened in Abu Dhabi on 1 January 1988.
The store was doing reasonably well, but not spectacularly so. But the shocker came in eight months when Joy tasted betrayal, as he says, when he noticed an advertisement in a Dubai newspaper: ‘Customers should beware when they buy gold from Abu Dhabi, where gold price is higher’. This was a direct hit at Alukkas’ business and, to his shock, Joy learnt that the ad was put out by none other than Verghese himself. Joy realised that it was his Judas moment. Obviously, angry and upset, he wanted to confront Verghese in his Dubai store, but subsequently cooled down, developed composure. Joy ultimately ended up opening an Alukkas’ shop in the same building where Chemmanur had its store, as if to pay him back in his (gold) coin! The rest is history.
Split of big family businesses is nothing new in India particularly after the death of the head of the family. Alukkas too was split among the five brothers and Joy was asked to walk out with the Gulf business. It was then that he decided to add ‘Joy’ to Alukkas brand and built the culture of running customer-friendly business. Writes Joy: “While our campaigns were a cut above the rest, we kept in mind that advertising alone does not cut in….the customer is intelligent and will not get taken in by hype.”