ET Deep Dive: Melting The Vault
7/12/202613 min
Gold has always been India’s emotional anchor — heirlooms passed down for weddings, festivals, and hard times. But soaring prices are rewriting that relationship. This episode looks at why Gen Z and millennials are increasingly selling or exchanging inherited jewellery: a Mumbai couple who funded their first home, a Bengaluru banker who redirected proceeds into equities, a family that turned gold into a son’s US master’s degree and his father’s new business. We unpack the data behind the shift — jewellery demand falling as investment demand in bars and coins rises — and ask who really benefits when old gold gets recycled: the customer, or the jeweller.
Lijee Philip and Shantanu Nandan Sharma report, Anirban Chowdhury narrates.
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Transcript preview
First 90 secondsAnirban Chaudhuri· Host0:00
[intro music] Welcome to ET Deep Dive, ET's best reported stories on audio. [echoing] Today's episode is based on a report by Liji Philip and Shantanu Nandan Sharma on how India's younger generation is changing its relationship with one of the country's most emotionally loaded assets, gold. [chime] It's Sunday the 12th of July. I'm Anirban Chaudhuri. This is the morning brief. [upbeat music] Let's start with a story. [gentle music] A young couple in Mumbai, we will call them Ritu and Madan. They inherited a stash of gold jewelry, heavy bangles, an elaborate bridal necklace, a few ornate heirloom pieces. But instead of keeping the jewelry in the locker, they sold it, all of it, for close to 20 lakh rupees. [upbeat music] They used that money to boost the down payment of their first home in Navi Mumbai. The result, their monthly EMI dropped by about 20,000 rupees, money that's now funding weekend trips to Lonavala