Swapnil Anuj Gupta, who once dreamed of becoming a civil servant, co-founded BabyWorks By Swapnil in Mumbai in 2021 with her brother Shrey Khandelwal as an ode to her own baby. India's first premium D2C baby and kids jewellery brand with a first-of-its-kind 3D customiser, BabyWorks secured ₹60 lakh from Aman Gupta on Shark Tank India Season 5 Episode 32.
An Ode to a Baby, a Brother, and a Gap in India's ₹18,000 Crore Market
• Founded in 2021 by Swapnil Anuj Gupta and her brother Shrey Khandelwal, BabyWorks By Swapnil was built as an ode to Swapnil's own baby. The founding emotion was personal and precise: she wanted jewellery that was genuinely safe, beautifully crafted, and designed specifically for the smallest, most sensitive wearers in any family.
• Swapnil dreamed of becoming a civil servant at a very young age, but BabyWorks had other plans for her. She became an entrepreneur and has zero regrets.
• The market she identified was enormous and structurally underserved. The founders estimate the total Indian jewellery market to be ₹6 lakh crore, with the Indian baby jewellery segment valued at ₹18,000 crore. Yet within that ₹18,000 crore segment, almost no brand had built a dedicated, premium, design-forward, D2C experience for parents who wanted more than a generic gold chain from a traditional jewellery store. BabyWorks was built to fill that gap entirely.
Hallmarked Gold, Architecture Thinking, and India's First 3D Baby Jewellery Customiser
• The boldest product decision BabyWorks made was to treat every piece of jewellery as a keepsake rather than an accessory. In a market dominated by generic designs sold through physical stores with no customisation and limited quality transparency, BabyWorks built a brand architecture around three pillars no competitor had combined before: hallmarked purity, child-safe design, and deep personalisation.
• The brand offers bracelets, earrings, nazariyas, pendants, kadas, and rings crafted in hallmarked 14K and 18K gold as well as 925 sterling silver. Every piece is hand-crafted with comfort, safety, and aesthetic appeal at the centre of every design decision.
• But the innovation that truly separates BabyWorks from every competitor in India's baby jewellery market came from Shrey's mind, not a jewellery industry playbook.
• Shrey Khandelwal brings an architectural and design-oriented mindset to everything he builds. In architecture, clients never approve spaces through imagination alone. They experience them through 3D visualisations, renders, and immersive previews before a single brick is laid. Shrey applied that same psychology to jewellery customisation and built India's first 3D baby jewellery customiser, integrated directly into the BabyWorks website.
• The tool allows parents to build, rotate, personalise, and visualise their exact jewellery piece in real time before placing an order. Charm placement, engraving styles, name initials, spacing, colours, and milestone details can all be seen precisely as they will appear on the finished product. The insight behind the tool was behavioural as much as technical: customers who can see their design before production begins convert faster, feel more confident, and experience the purchase as deeply personal rather than transactional.
• "Customers converted faster and felt more confident when they could visually experience their design before placing the order," Shrey explains. “Instead of asking customers to imagine the final product, BabyWorks decided to help them see it in real time."
• The result transformed the buying experience entirely. Parents building a first birthday kada or a newborn nazariya are no longer guessing at an outcome. They are participating in its creation, which makes every BabyWorks piece feel less like a purchase and more like a collaboration between a parent's love and a craftsman's skill.
• The pitch to the Sharks carried that same emotional intelligence. Swapnil and Shrey brought customised jewellery gifts for each Shark's children to the tank, a gesture that captured the brand's entire philosophy in a single unforgettable moment.
A CA Recognising Another CA's Ambition
• BabyWorks entered Shark Tank India Season 5 Episode 32 seeking ₹60 lakh for 4% equity at a ₹15 crore valuation. The pitch panel included Vineeta Singh, Ritesh Agarwal, Aman Gupta, Namita Thapar, and Kunal Bahl.
• Aman Gupta, co-founder of boAt and a Chartered Accountant himself, made a counter-offer of ₹60 lakh for 6% equity. His counter-offer came with the warmth of a CA recognising another CA's discipline and a Gupta seeing a fellow Gupta's ambition, a rare personal connection that made the negotiation feel less like a business deal and more like a family endorsement. The exchange included a lighthearted CA-to-CA and Gupta-to-Gupta moment that made the entire tank smile.
• The founders accepted, prioritising mentorship and brand-building assistance over preserving maximum equity. They also revealed their intentions to reorganise ownership into an equal 50:50 equity division between Shrey and Swapnil moving forward, a structural decision reflecting the equal partnership at the heart of the brand's founding story.
Scale and Real-World Impact
• BabyWorks By Swapnil was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Mumbai, Maharashtra. Products are available on babyworksbyswapnil.com in 14K and 18K hallmarked gold and 925 sterling silver, with India's first 3D baby jewellery customiser available directly on the website. The founders' expansion strategy involves launching on quick commerce platforms and establishing an experiential store in Mumbai by August 2026. The Indian baby jewellery segment is valued at ₹18,000 crore within a total Indian jewellery market of ₹6 lakh crore, giving BabyWorks a generational runway of opportunity ahead of it.
The Most Enduring Brands Are Built From the Most Personal Emotions
• The sharpest lesson from BabyWorks By Swapnil's journey is this: the brands that begin with a deeply personal emotional truth are the ones that earn a loyalty no advertising budget can manufacture.
• Swapnil became a mother and asked: what does this child deserve? That question produced a hallmarked, hand-crafted, customisable jewellery brand. Shrey asked: why should a parent have to imagine what they are ordering? That question produced India's first 3D baby jewellery customiser. Together, a civil servant's dream and an architect's instinct built something the jewellery industry had never seen before.
• "Shark Tank India Season 5 was a defining moment for us, not just as entrepreneurs, but as siblings building something meaningful together," the founders said.
• A civil service dream became an entrepreneurial one. A baby became a brand. A brother's architectural thinking became a technology first. And a moment in the Shark Tank became a national stage for one of India's most emotionally resonant jewellery stories.
• BabyWorks By Swapnil began as an ode to a child. It is now becoming an ode to every child in India.
Sources: CineShrushti, StartupArticle, VieStories, Snapdeal Blog, BabyWorks Official Website
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