Tarang Arora, now CEO and Creative Director of Amrapali, grew up in Jaipur surrounded by gemstones and craftsmanship, identifying stones by sight but lacking scientific vocabulary. His 2002 gemology training at GIA London revealed the mineral families and chemical compositions behind familiar stones, giving him formal knowledge that transformed client conversations and set him apart in a tradition-driven jewellery trade.
Amrapali, the Jaipur jewellery house founded in 1978 by two history students, Rajiv Arora and Rajesh Ajmera, has since grown into one of India's most recognisable names in heritage design, its pieces ranging from a few thousand rupees to well beyond a crore. Tarang Arora, Rajiv's son, now runs it end to end as CEO and Creative Director, from sourcing the stones himself to shaping what they eventually become. He grew up in Jaipur watching his father and uncle at the trade long before he had a name for any of it, and it wasn't until 2002, at a gemology classroom at GIA London, that the stones he already knew by sight gained a vocabulary underneath them.
With our series "My Firsts", in line with our first anniversary this month, we ask Arora to revisit the moment that actually shaped his career in the world of gemstones.
Long before any classroom, gemstones were simply part of the everyday landscape. "I've always grown up around gemstones, around hand craftsmanship, around Jaipur, around seeing my dad and uncle working and doing what they're doing," he says. "So that was always in me." He could recognise a stone by its colour, could name it on sight—what he didn't yet have was the vocabulary underneath it.
That changed in 2002, when Arora enrolled at GIA London to formally study gemology. "That's when my references opened to the whole thing," he recalls. Until then, he knew stones the way most people in the trade did—by colour and by name—without knowing what actually connected them. "I did not know their chemical composition; I did not know which families they belong to," he says. The classroom rearranged everything he thought he knew: emerald, aquamarine and morganite, it turned out, all belonged to the same beryl family; a clear crystal quartz could turn yellow and become a citrine, or purple and become an amethyst, without ever leaving its own mineral family. "So they're technically the same family," he says, still sounding faintly amazed by it.
Formal gemological training wasn't common in the jewellery trade at the time, and Arora is candid about the edge it gave him. "I think that was something which really, you know, was the first bits of learning, and I think formal knowledge is something which was not very common in the jewellery trade in those days," he says. Being able to speak that language with clients, rather than relying on instinct alone, changed how he was seen in a business built on inherited knowledge. "Knowing that and to be able to talk about it with your clients, with everyone, really helped me. I was really ahead of the game, especially back in the day," he adds.
It's a first that still shapes how he approaches every stone that passes through Amrapali today.