Independence Day 2026: How Indian high jewellery crafted its own freedom

A short distance away, Sanjay Kasliwal's Kishandas & Co takes a narrower, more collector-driven approach. The atelier works almost exclusively in antique and rose-cut diamonds, sourcing old stones and resetting them into bespoke pieces with a restraint that has earned it a following among serious jewellery buyers outside India, including at international auction previews.

Sunita Shekhawat has built her house around a single craft: meenakari, the Jaipur enamelling tradition that once decorated the reverse of Mughal jewellery, hidden from view beneath the gemstones. She brought it to the front, turning what was once a technical flourish into the main event, and trained a generation of artisans in a skill that had been quietly dying out.

Read more: Is the friendship bracelet fine jewellery’s most nostalgic comeback this International Friendship’s Day?

Amrapali Jewels, founded in Jaipur in 1978 by Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera, took the opposite route to court patronage. The house built its audience by treating tribal and folk jewellery as fine jewellery rather than craft curiosity, drawing its antique-finish gold and silver pieces from adornment traditions worn by rural communities across Rajasthan. Those pieces have shown up on international red carpets and were once stocked at Barneys New York, proof that Indian jewellery rooted entirely in village tradition needed no European reference to travel.

In Kolkata, Sabyasachi arrived at high jewellery from couture rather than a family workshop, but the material he draws on is just as regional. His pieces lean on West Bengal’s jadau tradition and antique-finish gold work, and the house has built a genuine bridal and bespoke commissioning business around that language, proof that Indian jewellery did not need a Paris apprenticeship to reach a global audience.

Moksh, the Mumbai house founded by Chirag Thakkar, works almost exclusively in rare coloured diamonds, a category most Indian jewellers leave to the big auction houses. Its pieces have made their way onto red carpets from Cannes to the Oscars, built on sourcing and cutting expertise rather than an inherited workshop.

Manish Malhotra’s jewellery line takes a couture-first approach, built as an extension of his bridal label rather than a standalone atelier. His collections lean heavily on kundan and polki work, designed to be worn against the weight of his own Indian skirts or lehengas and saris, and have become a fixture at Indian weddings alongside his couture. It is bespoke commissioning built around a single occasion rather than a lifetime, and no less serious in its craft for that.

Don’t miss: Amy Winehouse never needed diamonds to make a jewellery statement, and these looks prove it

Then there is Bhagat, the Mumbai house founded by Viren Bhagat and now carried forward by his son Asif, which operates almost entirely outside public view. There is no boutique to walk into. Clients are introduced by referral, and pieces have surfaced at Christie’s and Sotheby’s rather than in a shop window, prized for an art deco-influenced style that is unmistakably its own despite drawing on a Western vocabulary.

Tanishq belongs to a different category altogether. Part of Tata-owned Titan Company and headquartered in Bengaluru, it is India’s largest jewellery retailer by scale, which makes it an unlikely inclusion on a list built around ateliers. But its heritage division has staged museum-grade revival collections, and it offers bespoke bridal commissioning through its Rivaah counters, proof that Indian jewellery could be built into an institution of its own scale without licensing a foreign name to do it. Zoya, also under Titan, is Tanishq’s answer to a single-boutique maison: a solitaire and fine diamond specialist with stores in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, built to give Indian buyers a made-in-India version of the boutique experience usually associated with Place Vendôme.

Kalyan Jewellers takes the scale argument even further. Founded in Thrissur in 1993 by TS Kalyanaraman, the publicly listed chain has grown into one of the country’s largest jewellery retailers, with showrooms across India and outposts in the Middle East and the United States. Its heritage collections draw on the same regional techniques as the smaller ateliers on this list, proof that Indian jewellery scaled into a retail institution without losing its craft references along the way.

NOW READ

Femininity is ‘knowing yourself’: Carina Lau on Chanel high jewellery, cinema and grace under pressure

Are luxury investments the smartest way to wear and protect your wealth?

From Tutankhamun to today: how Van Cleef & Arpels revives Egypt in its 2026 high jewellery collection