Anushree Pacheriwal built Tiramisu into a demi-fine jewellery brand from Surat

Demi-fine is the category Indian jewellery had been missing. On one side sits fine jewellery in solid gold, bought as investment and stored in a locker. On the other sits costume jewellery, cheap and disposable, that discolours within a season. Between them is a large gap for pieces that are properly made, wearable every day and priced so that owning several is reasonable.

Western markets filled that space some years ago. India has been slower, partly because gold occupies such a specific cultural and financial role that anything not gold was long treated as not serious.

Tiramisu, founded in 2024 by Anushree Pacheriwal, is one of the brands building that middle. Despite a name that suggests a dessert, it is a demi-fine jewellery label, and it has expanded to around thirty retail points across the country including a standalone store at Chennai International Airport.

A designer and agency founder, not a jeweller

Pacheriwal is a graduate in communications and graphic design, and co-founded Gemius, described as one of India's younger full-service creative and social media agencies. She has close to thirteen years of professional experience and is based in Surat.

That background inverts the usual order in jewellery. Most brands in the category are founded by people from the trade who then hire marketing help. Here the founder's core skill is brand and communication, applied to a product category.

For demi-fine specifically, that is arguably the right way round. The category is not defined by rare stones or investment value, it is defined by design, presentation and how a piece makes someone feel wearing it on an ordinary Tuesday. Those are communication problems as much as manufacturing ones, and Surat, as one of the world's major diamond and jewellery processing centres, supplies the manufacturing capability nearby.

The retail decision

Most new Indian jewellery brands stay online, because inventory in this category is expensive and physical retail multiplies that cost across every location. Tiramisu has moved into physical retail quickly, reaching around thirty retail points including three standalone stores.

The reasoning is sound for jewellery specifically. It is a category people strongly prefer to see, hold and try on. Colour, scale against the skin and how a piece sits are all difficult to judge from a photograph, and online return rates in jewellery reflect that. A physical presence converts far better and reduces the returns that quietly erode margins.

The airport choice is a deliberate one rather than incidental. An airport store reaches travellers with time to browse, money to spend and a habit of buying gifts, and it puts the brand in front of a national audience without needing a store in every city. It is expensive real estate that does a specific job.

Visibility and the celebrity question

Tiramisu has been noted as counting well-known Indian actors among those who have worn its pieces, including names such as Kareena Kapoor Khan, Katrina Kaif, Sara Ali Khan and Rashmika Mandanna.

This is worth treating carefully. Celebrity association in Indian fashion covers a wide range, from paid endorsement to a stylist selecting a piece for a shoot, and the public reporting rarely distinguishes between them. Being worn by a well-known actor is a genuine marketing asset and is not evidence of commercial scale.

What it does indicate is that the design work is good enough to be selected by professional stylists, who have essentially unlimited options and no obligation to choose a young brand. For a label founded in 2024, that is a meaningful signal about the product even if it says nothing about revenue.

The founder outside the company

Pacheriwal organises TEDxSurat, described as one of the larger TEDx events in the country, and is described as an avid reader, a cook and a baker who performs.

That is not a decorative detail. Running a large TEDx event means recruiting speakers, assembling sponsors, coordinating volunteers and delivering a complex live production on a fixed date. It is unpaid, demanding operational work of exactly the kind a founder needs to be good at.

It also builds something valuable in a city like Surat, which is a wealthy and industrially significant place with a much thinner startup network than Bengaluru or Mumbai. Someone who convenes the city's ideas community sits at the centre of a network that is otherwise hard to access, and for a consumer brand founded there, that reach matters.

Building a jewellery brand from Surat

Surat's role in the global jewellery trade is not widely understood outside the industry. A very large share of the world's diamonds are cut and polished there, and the city carries deep manufacturing capability, skilled labour and supplier networks built over decades.

For a jewellery brand that is a substantial structural advantage. Being near manufacturing means faster sampling, tighter control over quality and the ability to iterate on a design without shipping prototypes across the country. A brand run from Delhi or Mumbai is generally managing its production at a distance, with everything that implies about lead times and oversight.

What Surat does not have is a consumer brand ecosystem. It is a manufacturing and trading city rather than a marketing one, so the talent for brand building, content and digital growth is thinner locally than in the metros. A founder whose own background is in communications and who co-founded a creative agency is unusually well placed to compensate for exactly that gap.

The combination is the interesting part. Manufacturing depth on one side and brand capability on the other, in a category where most competitors have one or the other. Indian jewellery is full of family businesses with excellent production and weak brands, and of well-marketed labels that depend entirely on third-party manufacturing they cannot control.

Anushree Pacheriwal’s net worth and ownership

There is no verified public net-worth figure for Anushree Pacheriwal. Tiramisu is a private company founded in 2024 with no publicly reported institutional funding round, no disclosed revenue and no published valuation.

She also co-founded the creative agency Gemius, and holdings across both businesses are not in the public domain. Celebrity visibility and retail expansion are marketing and operational facts rather than financial ones, and neither supports an estimate of personal wealth. Any specific figure attached to her name online is invented.

What Anushree Pacheriwal’s story teaches Indian founders

The first lesson is that a communication background can be the right foundation for a design-led category. Demi-fine jewellery competes on how a piece looks and how the brand makes a customer feel, not on carat weight or investment value. Founders sometimes assume they need trade credentials to enter a category when the actual competitive axis lies elsewhere.

The second is that channel choice should follow the product rather than convention. Staying online is cheaper and is wrong for jewellery, where people want to try things on and where photographs mislead. Moving quickly into physical retail costs more and matches how the product is actually bought, which is the question that should decide it.

The third concerns building a network where there is not one. Surat has wealth and industry and relatively little startup infrastructure. Running the city's largest ideas event is unpaid and demanding, and it places a founder at the centre of a network that would otherwise take years to assemble. Community work is frequently underrated as a business asset outside the metros.

Frequently asked questions about Anushree Pacheriwal and Tiramisu

Who is Anushree Pacheriwal?

Anushree Pacheriwal is the founder of Tiramisu, an Indian demi-fine jewellery brand founded in 2024 and based in Surat. She is a graduate in communications and graphic design, co-founded the creative agency Gemius, and organises TEDxSurat.

Is Tiramisu a dessert brand?

No. Despite the name, Tiramisu is a demi-fine jewellery brand, which is the category between solid gold fine jewellery and disposable costume jewellery, offering well-made pieces designed to be worn every day.

How many stores does Tiramisu have?

The brand has reached around thirty retail points across India, including three standalone stores, one of which is at Chennai International Airport.

What is demi-fine jewellery?

It is the middle category between fine jewellery, which is solid gold and often treated as investment, and costume jewellery, which is cheap and discolours quickly. Demi-fine pieces are properly made and wearable daily at prices that make owning several reasonable.

Has Tiramisu raised funding?

There is no publicly reported institutional funding for Tiramisu, and no disclosed revenue or valuation figures.

What is Anushree Pacheriwal’s net worth?

There is no verified public net-worth figure. Tiramisu is private with no reported funding or disclosed financials, and celebrity visibility and store count are not financial indicators, so any figure circulating online is unverified.