Try on jewellery, without trying them on!

Online jewelry store CaratLane unveiled its mobile app today. It features facial recognition technology and 3D imaging to provide a virtual ‘try-on’ experience.

Users can take a video of themselves, and the 3D imaging generates a 3D view of the customer wearing CaratLane earrings. The user can then swipe both ways to get an idea of how she looks wearing those earrings. One also has the option to order up to 5 products, and a silver samples with the same dimensions are shipped. Once you confirm upon a purchase, it’s delivered within a week.

Mithun Sacheti, Co-founder and CEO of CaratLane says, “Efficiency is a big problem in the jewelry industry. The rental of a brick-and-mortar store is only 2-3%, but there is huge potential of savings in stocks and working capital. With a 10,000 sqft store, the inventory is huge. The bigger the store, the lower the inventory rotation and the lesser its efficiency. We pass on those savings to our customers.”

“In case of jewelry, people pay significant amounts for relatively small objects. It’s time we put the trust back in our customers. They shouldn’t feel threatened to walk into a jewelry store. That's exactly why we have open displays”, he adds.

CaratLane expects the app would contribute 30-40% of its business over the next six months. The company currently has 10 stores across 7 cities, and delivers to 20 cities across India. It is looking to expand to the US, UK, Australia and some Asian nations soon.

I asked a female colleague to try out CaratLane’s nifty feature. Here’s how it turned out!

Once she shot her video, she could fix the exact position of each earring.


...and Voila! You could try them on!


You could even zoom in for a better view.


This could get addictive if you love jewellery!