Guides
The answers a calculator cannot settle.
The Workbench answers what a number can answer. These are the other questions — a catalogue blocked without a reason, a settlement that lands short, a parcel that comes back empty, a rate that is different in every shop on the road.
Three answers sit on the first page of Google and one of them is wrong. Composite supply, separately invoiced making, and the rupee gap between them.
Pricing26 August 2026Kasauti, Karat Meter, Acid: How a Counter Really Tests PurityTouchstone, karat meter and acid answer three different questions. What each test can tell you about a piece across the counter, and what none of them can.
Business26 August 2026The Words on Your Karigar's SlipGhat, kaat, burada, chhut, dhalai, mazdoori, patti — the words said back to you at the bench, written down in English for the first time.
Shoot26 August 2026What a Jewellery Photoshoot Costs in IndiaStudio per-photo, a photographer's day, a model day, or your own corner. A worksheet for the only figure that compares them: cost per usable photo.
Listing26 August 2026Model Photos Without a Model: What Marketplaces AllowSupplier images, stock photos and AI models carry three different risks. What each platform's published rules say, and what to assume where they are silent.
Pricing26 August 2026Who Actually Decides Today's Gold RateFour numbers reach a seller before ten in the morning and none of them is wrong. Where the rate on your own board actually comes from.
Shoot26 August 2026Stones That Photograph BlackA dark stone is not an exposure problem. Coloured stones, CZ, enamel and pearl each need the opposite of what instinct says.
Shoot26 August 2026The Reflection in the Bangle Is YouYou, your phone, the ceiling fan and the window grille, curved across a piece that has to go up today. Finding the reflection, then getting out of it.
Business26 August 2026Where Imitation and Silver Stock Is Actually BoughtRajkot, Purdilpur, Sadar Bazar, Zaveri Bazaar and the rest, described rather than ranked — and the questions that reveal a middleman in a minute.
Pricing26 August 2026The Words on an Indian Jewellery BillEvery word on an Indian jewellery bill, in two lines each, with a link to the page that works the number out.
Business26 August 2026Which Registrations a Jewellery Seller Actually NeedsFour registrations people collapse into one. Which of them applies to you, what a marketplace asks for regardless, and where each figure is published.
Business26 August 2026Selling Gold That Carries No HallmarkA customer's unmarked family gold and your own unsold tray are two different questions, with two different rules and two different answers.
The five sections
Starting Out: What a Jewellery Seller Decides First
The decisions a jewellery seller makes before the first listing exists — registrations, stock, what photographs cost, and what to read next.
Getting Listed and Staying Listed
Why a marketplace blocked, flagged or buried a jewellery listing, and the order to fix it in.
The Money That Leaves After the Sale
Everything between the order value and the bank credit: fees you can price, taxes that come back to you, recoveries you can dispute.
Metal, Purity and the Bench
Where a rate comes from, how purity is tested, which weight a percentage sits on, and the words a karigar uses.
- Wastage on Gross Weight: The Line That Bills Gold on Stone
- 3%, 5% or 18%: The Making-Charge Line Half the Internet Gets Wrong
- Kasauti, Karat Meter, Acid: How a Counter Really Tests Purity
- The Words on Your Karigar's Slip
- Who Actually Decides Today's Gold Rate
- The Words on an Indian Jewellery Bill
- Selling Gold That Carries No Hallmark
Photographs of Your Own Stock
The four faults the camera cards and the lightbox wizard do not cover: dark stones, the room behind you, colour that shifts, and where a phone stops.
What is here, and what is on the bench
A guide is written only where a calculator cannot finish the job. If the honest answer is a number, it lives on the tool that works the number out — which is free, needs no account, and is linked from inside the guide at the point you need it. If the answer is a judgement, a sequence or a piece of evidence, it is here.
That line is enforced rather than remembered: the build fails if a guide targets a question one of the 36 tool pages already answers.
How these are kept current
Every guide carries the month its figures were checked and the date it is next read again — twelve months for something that does not move, six for anything decided by a Budget or a GST Council meeting, three for a marketplace rule. When a figure changes it is corrected on the guide, on the tool page that answers the same question, and in llms.txt, in one commit.
No guide prints a live gold, silver or diamond rate. The tools refuse to fetch or guess a rate, and a page that printed one would be wrong by the afternoon.