The awards ceremony was held on September 13, 2026, at the Bharat Diamond Bourse in Mumbai. Shri Amit Shah, Union Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Cooperation, was the Chief Guest. Shri Devendra Fadnavis, Chief Minister of Maharashtra; Shri Eknath Shinde, Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra; Shri Harsh Sanghavi, Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat; Adv. Ashish Shelar and Shri Mangal Prabhat Lodha, Ministers in the Government of Maharashtra; Shri Govind Dholakia, MP, Rajya Sabha; Shri Kirit Bhansali, Chairman, GJEPC; Shri Anoop Mehta, President, Bharat Diamond Bourse; and others were also present.
Shri Vallabhbhai Patel received the Lifetime Achievement Award from Shri Amit Shah. Shanay Parekh, Director, KIRA, received the Highest Employment on Company Rolls award at the same ceremony. The awards recognise export performance, value addition, employment generation and R&D investment. First held in 1975, the India Gem & Jewellery Awards were being presented for the 52nd time.
Addressing the industry, Shri Amit Shah spoke about what he described as the coming era of lab-grown diamonds. “Ab lab-grown diamond ka zamana aane wala hai.” The era of lab-grown diamonds is upon us, and he urged the industry not to focus merely on price. He said that, in terms of volume, the lab-grown diamond market is poised to expand to nearly 50 times the size of the current diamond market.
“The time has come to change our scale. Speed alone will not do it. Change the scale and you will rise much higher,” he told the industry. He also said India should emerge as a founder industry in lab-grown diamonds, setting the category’s terms rather than following them, with Indian brands becoming global brands.
For Shri Vallabhbhai S. Patel, the Lifetime Achievement Award marks 55 years in the diamond industry. Born into a cotton-farming family in a village of about five hundred people in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district, Patel studied only up to the fourth standard. In 1971, he took a job at a diamond-cutting workshop there. A venture of his own in 1978 failed and left him in debt. His father gave him the money to repay it, and in 1982, he moved his family to Bombay.
In 1985, he founded Kiran Gems with his brothers and built it into the world’s largest manufacturer of natural polished diamonds, a company that has won IGJA honours edition after edition.
In 2022, at the age of 65, when most people retire, he founded KIRA. Four years later, KIRA is described as the world’s largest grower of lab-grown diamonds. He is the only person in the industry to have built the world’s largest company in both. At KIRA’s launch, he set out its purpose in one line: “Har ghar Hira, har ghar KIRA.”, meaning a diamond in every home.
“I have worked all my life on a diamond very few people in my village could ever own. A labgrown diamond changes that,” said Shri Vallabhbhai Patel, Founder, KIRA.
“In 2021 he said publicly that he would build a lab-grown diamond company and make it the largest in the world. Most of the trade was still deciding whether the category was real. He did it in four years. That is vision, and that is scale,” said Ashish Lakhani, Director, KIRA.
The Highest Employment on Company Rolls award is measured by the number of people a company carries on its own rolls. KIRA has increased its workforce from 2,000 to more than 10,500 in roughly four years, giving it the largest direct workforce of any company in India’s gem and jewellery industry. This was the measure on which GJEPC judged the award for 2025-26.
Planning, sawing, cutting, polishing, grading, certification, setting and despatch are all carried out in-house, with each stage staffed by the company’s own employees. Nine out of every ten of the world’s polished diamonds are cut in Surat, a figure cited by the Minister in his address, and KIRA’s artisans work in that tradition.
Alongside its payroll, KIRA and the founding family support community development, women’s empowerment, hostel donations and the Kiran medical college and hospital.
“Our artisans and employees are the real gems behind KIRA. More than ten thousand of them built this company in four years, and everything we have achieved rests on their skill and their commitment. We are grateful to every one of them, and this award is theirs,” said Shanay Parekh, Director, KIRA.
“One in every three lab-grown diamonds in the world is cut by our people. Machines can grow a diamond. Only a skilled hand can finish one,” said Rajesh Lakhani, Founder, KIRA.
KIRA’s operations also align with the manufacturing chain outlined by Shri Amit Shah. “I urge all of you to ensure that the entire ecosystem and manufacturing chain of lab-grown diamonds remains firmly in Indian hands: from making the machine to the moment the jewellery reaches a woman’s hand, the whole system should be in India’s control. You can do it. Surat and Mumbai have shown it,” the Minister said.
He also noted that the Government of India, along with the governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat, is bringing policy support to the sector.
At KIRA, growing, cutting, polishing, grading, certification and jewellery manufacturing all take place under one roof at its one million sq ft facility in Surat, using the world’s largest fleet of CVD machines. The company operates more than 5,000 growing machines and produces over 400,000 polished carats a month. One in every three lab-grown diamonds in the world comes from KIRA.
Production operates on 100 MW of captive solar power, with capacity set to rise to 200 MW over the next two years. KIRA exports to more than 75 countries and supplies over 6,000 clients worldwide, with more than 400,000 certified stones live on its inventory portal.
Demand for lab-grown diamonds is also moving quickly in the largest markets. In the United States, over 61 per cent of engagement rings now carry a lab-grown centre stone. Younger buyers ask where a stone came from and how it was made, while a fully traceable diamond grown on renewable power addresses both questions. Affordability further widens the market, allowing more people to own a diamond in more sizes and designs than at any point in the trade’s history.
KIRA describes itself as the world’s largest grower and manufacturer of CVD lab-grown diamonds. It grows, cuts, polishes, grades and sets lab-grown diamonds under one roof at its one million sq ft facility in Surat, India, operating more than 5,000 CVD growing machines and producing over 400,000 polished carats a month on 100 MW of captive solar. The company exports to more than 75 countries and supplies over 6,000 clients worldwide, with more than 400,000 certified stones live and more than 10,500 people on company rolls. Its channel offices are in Mumbai, Surat, Hong Kong and New York.
The gem and jewellery sector accounts for 6.3 per cent of India’s merchandise exports and supports around 75 lakh direct and indirect jobs. India processes over 90 per cent of the world’s cut and polished diamonds.
The 52nd India Gem & Jewellery Awards therefore brought together two milestones for KIRA at the same ceremony: recognition of its more than 10,500-strong direct workforce and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Shri Vallabhbhai Patel, whose 55-year journey in the diamond industry has spanned natural polished diamonds and the rise of lab-grown diamonds
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