Indian diamantaires shining in Antwerp

ANTWERP, Belgium: Which Indian companyhas a turnover of over $1 billion, has 15,000 employees, and is rated worldclass? Of course, there’s the mighty Reliance. Maybe the oil monopolies.Then the troika of info-tech majors – TCS, Wipro andInfosys.How about Rosy Blue? Never heard of it? Mostpeople haven’t. And strictly speaking, Rosy Blue is not an Indian firm;it’s Belgian. So are Eurostar, Vijaydimon, Gembel, and Arjav Diamonds.They are all diamond houses headquartered in Antwerp, Belgium. But they arefounded and led by Indian diamantaires. The sparkling success ofIndian diamantaires is one of our lesser known sagas, although it’s beenfeatured briefly in this column before. To realize its full dimension, one needsto visit Antwerp, where it is said God decided to rest the diamond business.Some 90 per cent of all world’s diamonds pass through this city. Now, morethan half, probably two-thirds, go through Indian hands.Theworld’s diamond mining is dominated by De Beers. Rough trading, cuttingand polishing is the Indian domain. The South African giant sells rough diamondsto an exclusive club of ‘sightholders.’ De Beers has only 85sightholders today. Nearly 50 are Indian. Open any diamond industrymagazine and you will see more than half the advertising is from Indian firms– Bhavani Gems, K.Girdharilal, D.Navinchandra, and M.Suresh are musclingout Tache Diamonds, Moshe Levy, A.Schwartz and Sons. In Antwerp’s DiamondDistrict, Gujarati mingles with Hebrew, Flemish and French as the lingua franca.Any Jewish, Belgian and Lebanese diamantaire will tell you the Indians have runaway with the business. The Indian successis mostly attributed to what the locals call ‘cheap goods and cheaplabour;’ Indians produced diamonds out of roughage others discarded bytaking it to Surat and Bombay where (initially) sweatshop workers coaxed outlittle sparklers. Now Indians have moved up the value chain and the locals arelooking at other attributes – their industry and familyvalues.The diamond business works on trust so most firms are tightlyfamily-owned and run (Rosy Blue is about the first to break the mould). In fact,the top half-dozen firms are all related by marriage. The scion of Gembel ismarried to the daughter of Vijaydimon; Vijay’s daughter is married intothe Eurostar family. And so on. Almost all top diamantaires tracetheir origin to the small town of Palanpur on the Gujarat-Rajasthan border. InAntwerp, they all work in the same block of less than 500 square meters andoften in the same building on different floors. They are of same stock but theyare also fierce rivals – from nine to five.After that –and on holidays -- they let their hair down in the most extravagantly desimanner possible. This includes multi-million dollar weddings for which they flydown assorted Khans, Khannas and Kapoors. Last Thursday, they rented the biggestlocal movie hall called Metropolis to show the movie(just to hang together; the topline have home theatres).Cricket is the other passion. Each year,the desi diamantaires play against a De Beers XI. The games are million dollaraffairs – one year they called Colonial Cousins to perform; then Cirque duSoleil; then Bombay Dreams. Last week, Kapil Dev came by – just to sayhello to old friends. On Friday, some of them headed to the Belgian Formula OneGrand Prix (yes, some of them own Ferraris and Lambhorghinis).In theold days, locals who lost their business to Indians also attributed it to Indianthrift. Now they are awed by the extravaganzas.