Diamonds are troublesome, however buying them shouldn’t be.
Overview
Really, are diamonds a girl’s greatest good friend? Diamonds are seen as a logo of affection and ‘endlessly’ in tradition, largely due to good advertising methods (and the industry-controlling monopoly De Beers exercised for greater than a century that raised moral questions).
Ajay Anand based “Uncommon Carat,” typically often called the “Kayak of Diamonds,” in response to the pressure of shopping for a diamond with out being ripped off (or shopping for from unethical sources) and an absence of openness within the provide chain and {industry}.
He was dissatisfied with the method he used to purchase the engagement ring for his fiancée, so he got down to develop a good market for diamond patrons that will be supported by blockchain, digital actuality, synthetic intelligence, and knowledge science.
Earlier than making a purchase order, the standard purchaser who’s looking for the perfect ring to pop “The Query” conducts a considerable quantity of analysis. This will rank simply behind their first dwelling or vehicle as considered one of their most expensive purchases.
Moreover, quite a lot of parts, together with coloration, carat, reduce, readability, and fluorescence, can have an effect on a diamond’s worth in the marketplace. Since gemologists are ceaselessly motivated to promote explicit stones based mostly on commissions or different gross sales incentives, the market is stuffed with data asymmetry. The precise shopper just isn’t thought of in any of this.
The way it works
The net retailer Uncommon Carat doesn’t inventory or promote any of its personal diamonds. Customers enter varied parameters (equivalent to worth, form, and carat) on the location, and the platform populates the outcomes with numerous related listings for comparability with complete pricing transparency and scores from unbiased gemologists. The person interface is just like that of Kayak or Expedia, besides as an alternative of discovering motels and flights, customers are searching for diamonds. By means of free on-line data, the web site additionally makes an attempt to tell guests concerning the diamond buy course of.
As well as, Uncommon Carat unveiled Rocky, the primary diamond “chatbot” (powered by IBM’s Watson companies), to help clients of their search and purchase selections in a way akin to that of a bodily store, however with one hundred pc neutral transparency.
Rocky assesses diamonds based mostly on their carat, reduce, coloration, readability, polish, and depth and gives customers with shopping for recommendation akin to that of a real gemologist. Rocky’s sole motivation is to supply purchasers the best charge relying on the factors they supply.
Based on Anand, “Uncommon Carat’s know-how attracts on the huge quantity of information it has gathered over the earlier 4 months, together with 10 million knowledge factors on diamond pricing and traits, greater than 2 million person queries, and greater than 100,000 messages the agency has exchanged with customers. Rocky additionally retains getting higher due to machine studying. Day-after-day, a gemologist assesses the bot’s work and feeds the suggestions into IBM’s Watson companies, bettering Rocky’s potential to establish the best provides for customers.
Enterprise Mannequin
Uncommon Carat doesn’t inventory or promote any of its personal diamonds as a result of considered one of its prime issues was to take care of its objectivity. The platform capabilities solely as a market, bringing collectively suppliers and clients by open data alternate. None of Uncommon Carat’s income comes from commissions; all of it comes from promoting.
Goal Buyer
Uncommon Carat doesn’t need to cater to the extra prosperous client base that prefers to buy at shops like Tiffany’s and Cartier for premium jewels. As a substitute, they need to help the larger common millennial demographic who’re merely looking for to get an excellent deal and are acquainted with web procuring.
Worth Creation & Worth Seize Technique
By providing data and pricing transparency, in addition to steerage from human gemologists and a step-by-step buying course of facilitated by Rocky the chatbot, Uncommon Carat goals to supply worth for diamond patrons. Uncommon Carat is democratizing the buying of diamonds through the usage of synthetic intelligence, machine studying, knowledge analytics, and digital actuality. Beforehand, a lot of this course of was veiled in thriller and smoke.
The purpose of Uncommon Carat is to easily help the standard millennial web purchaser in making one of the crucial vital purchases of their lives. Their worth seize approach is totally ad-based, with no compensation paid for sending clients to sure companies, with the intention to keep objectivity.
Alternatives and Challenges
Though they’ve a laudable purpose and an excellent worth seize method, being an ad-based firm has a number of drawbacks. For one, it will likely be difficult to extend platform revenue outdoors the paid promotion. Uncommon Carat is pursuing quite a lot of choices, together with:
- Blockchain know-how will present openness in an {industry} that’s ceaselessly immoral by enabling patrons to grasp the mining and processing provide chain from which every gem comes. This know-how is the results of a collaboration with Everledger.
- Digital actuality is a brand new know-how that Uncommon Carat plans to introduce to its platform. This could make it potential for ring patrons to simulate the method of making an attempt on jewellery and comprehend how it will appear to them after a purchase order.
- Rocky, their chatbot, will quickly have extra Watson companies, equivalent to Watson Imaginative and prescient, which might interpret stories on diamond high quality.
Conclusion
Ajay Anand, CEO of Uncommon Carat, remarked that chatbots could also be very helpful within the right enterprise and use case. “We’ve found that diamonds are a very good match for the media, particularly given the extremely organized decision-making that follows the well-known 4 Cs of diamonds: carat, reduce, coloration, and readability. Rocky has demonstrated his experience within the diamond buying decision-making course of by aiding our beta testers in making the correct decisions.
