BlueStone.com, an online jewellery and accessories e-commerce venture has raised $5 million from Meena Ganesh, CEO & MD of Pearson Education Services and e-commerce obsessed Venture Capital firm Accel Partners. Bluestone has been founded by Vidya Nataraj and former CEO of Chakpak.com Gaurav Kushwaha. Nataraj has retail experience with Landmark Ltd before it was sold to TATA Trent and is married to Ganesh Narayan, Joint MD of jewellery business C. Krishniah Chetty & Sons, while Kushwaha was previously with Amazon.com and had also raised funds from Accel Partners for his (non-ecommerce) venture Chakpak.com. The fund raising was reported earlier today by VCCircle, though the details they mentioned are slightly different. Speaking with MediaNama, Nataraj said that the company plans to use the funding to increase its design library and build on their use experience, trying to create as close a real life experience in shopping online, apart from touch and feel, and also invest in technology. She said that it's too early to define a split in spends between marketing, technology, design and logstics, since the site has just gone live two days ago. At present, the plan is to focus on online marketing, social media and PR for marketing, and an offline campaign will be the next step, possibly 4-5 months down the line. Margins: "With online, we don't have rents, and this is significant especially in jewellery, since you have to hold stock. We pass on these benefits to the consumer, which is why it is cheaper online, and…
