Half Celebration During Festivals

The big, fat Indian wedding is off. But India beats the dhol with EMIs, digital gold

- Yagnesh Kansara

Prashant Jadhav, a young PR professional from Mumbai, was looking forward to buy gold for his wedding in December 2020. He had planned to purchase jewellery for his bride. With the pandemic, everything has taken a back seat.

Jadhav complains, “The spread of Covid-19 and subsequent lockdown derailed my entire plan and gold prices also began to rise sharply. I have to delay my wedding for a few months because of it.”

The pandemic has taught us all one big lesson—stay grounded, stay austere and go online. When it’s a choice between life and death, everything can wait, be it festive fanfare or big fat Indian weddings.

Come October, the biggest festivals begin and go on till Christmas in December. This also happens to be an auspicious time for weddings. However, with restrictions of social distancing and shoestring budgets, everything is in a very low key.

Weddings are a big business in India. According to a report by KPMG, the US wedding industry is ranked at number one in terms of size at $70 billion annually. The Indian wedding industry is ranked second with an estimated size of $40-50 billion. And gold is an integral part of it.

However with gold prices on a surge, retail demand for gold has seen a big dent: it has slid 56 per cent in the first half of the year to 165.6 tonnes as compared to the same period last year.