At the end of a long day spent interviewing the shortlisted aspirants, the three-member jury at The Indian Gem & Jewellery Awards 2014 (IGJA) was all praise for the commitment shown by the participating companies and their obvious desire to excel on all fronts, expressing the view that it was not easy to pick winners from such a strong field.The Jury comprisedNirupa Bhatt, Managing Director (India & ME), GIA; M.Narendra, former CMD, Indian Overseas Bank and PawanBindal, Director, Dun & Bradstreet (D&B).

The Jury round is the second phase in selecting the winners for the prestigious IGJA 2014 awards which will be distributed at an official function to be held on October 10, 2014 at the JamshedBhabha Auditorium in NCPA, Mumbai. Over 50 companies were shortlisted after the initial screening and made presentations to the jury. The winners will be announced shortly.

The IGJA, now in the second year under a new formatstresses on all round excellence rather than just financial performance. Open to GJEPC member-exporters, the shortlisting selection is based on a proprietary quantitative model developed by Knowledge Partner Dun &Bradstreet that is based primarily on computation of composite scores across multiple parameters.

“We have assessed the applicants not just on their overall financial performance,” said M.Narendra, “but also on a number of other related parameters such as incremental value added, efficiency ratio, willingness to innovate, broader commitment to society etc. There is a clear indication that companies want to improve standards and raise the bar.”

Nirupa Bhatt pointed out that there are a number of very focused companies in the sector, and the presentations made it clear that many more are moving in that direction. “It is heartening that not only have the number of applicants increased, but the overall process too has moved forward from last year,” she said.

“We have seen a high participation ratio in this industry, clearly indicating that there are many who aspire to be ‘Best in Class’,” said PawanBindal. He added that the jury gave adequate weightage both to objective factors like financials and subjective ones like ethics, CSR etc.

Colin Shah, convener, Awards Sub-committee, GJEPC, said, “The industry welcomed the changes that we have brought about in the Awards scheme last year. This year we have done some fine tuning to ensure greater participation from the MSME sector, enhance the transparency of the process, and introduced one new category for ‘Best First Generation Entrepreneur’.”

He added that all this has led to the industry taking a greater interest, noting, “This year has seen a 15% rise in the number of participating companies with applications received from all over India.”