Unlocking the Hidden Wealth of Personal Jewelry: Nidhi Singhvi’s Journey with Unvault
In the bustling gemstone city of Jaipur, India, gold jewelry holds a unique place as a family heirloom passed through generations. For Nidhi Singhvi, who grew up there, such jewelry is more than adornment—it’s an integral part of calculating net worth, a sentiment she shared with Entrepreneur. However, when Singhvi relocated to the United States about 14 years ago, she observed a vastly different perspective on this valuable asset.
“Jewelry was always done stupidly,” Singhvi remarks, highlighting the steep markups when purchasing and the limited options for selling, often reduced to pawn shops or local jewelers, especially for broken or individual pieces like chains or earrings. This disparity sparked Singhvi’s entrepreneurial vision after she earned her MBA from the Wharton School.
From Finance to Jewelry: The Birth of Sonalore
Singhvi’s professional background includes working in currency investing at a hedge fund and establishing an options trading desk at a crypto brokerage. Despite this, her fascination with the jewelry market never waned, particularly emphasizing gold as the “OG asset class.”
In 2024, alongside fellow Wharton alumnus Navya Reddy, Singhvi co-founded Sonalore, a company specializing in 18-karat gold jewelry backed by a lifetime buyback guarantee. The venture aimed to redefine gold jewelry’s value proposition, but customers soon presented an unexpected challenge. They owned substantial jewelry collections but had no reliable way to determine their current worth.
“The way the customers pushed us was the revelation there,” Singhvi explains. “They know it’s an investment. Ask any woman. She treats her jewelry differently than everything else. But what’s the value of it? For an asset to be a true asset, you need to know the value of it.” This insight planted the seed for a new business direction.
Co-founding Unvault: Harnessing AI to Unlock a $750 Billion Market
Responding swiftly to customer demand, Singhvi and Reddy launched Unvault in June 2025, a financial platform based in Palo Alto, California, dedicated to personal gold. This move targeted a staggering $750 billion asset class often “hiding in plain sight.” By October, leveraging artificial intelligence, they unveiled Unvault’s first valuation app.
Operating without external funding initially proved advantageous, compelling the founders to become “AI natives” and utilize cutting-edge AI technologies to enhance their platform. The app enables users to photograph their jewelry, using volumetric data combined with expert jewelry knowledge to estimate value accurately. Singhvi notes, “Even though at that time we were using frontier [AI] models, we still used our layer of understanding of jewelry to give better results. And that took off.”
Expanding Services: Enabling Jewelry Sales and Building Transparency
Customer feedback soon led Unvault to introduce the option for users to sell their jewelry through the platform, launching this feature within the first month. To facilitate this, the company established a PO box in Palo Alto to receive items. Singhvi recalls personally driving to collect valuable pieces customers shipped, underscoring her hands-on approach.
Unvault was initially designed to help users track and appraise their jewelry, but selling became an organic extension driven by user needs. Transparency remains a cornerstone of this process, with the company providing detailed video documentation throughout—from unboxing to gold purity testing with X-ray machines. Singhvi explains, “It will tell you exactly, it’s 17.34-karat gold. Then we will give you a complete breakdown. So it’s not one number for a bunch of your jewelry items. It’ll be a number for every single item, and then the fees are broken down as well.”
Overcoming Investor Skepticism in Silicon Valley
Despite early traction, Singhvi and Reddy encountered skepticism when approaching Silicon Valley investors, many of whom favored backing companies with trillion-dollar valuations. “[Investors] want to back Anthropic, and I understand it. If I am making that decision, I want to do that as well. So there’s definitely some of that. They’re like, ‘Oh, gold jewelry, can you be $1 trillion?’” Singhvi explains.
One investor even doubted the jewelry market, asserting women do not wear much jewelry. Singhvi counters, “By the way, that’s a few thousand dollars right there. But women do have jewelry. Jewelry predates agriculture. It has taken a lot of different forms, but there is an industry that is working, and you are a participant in it whether you like it or not.”
Fortunately, Unvault’s strong customer base proved the market’s validity. Singhvi notes, “VCs are very good at [smelling] customer traction. Everyone that partnered with us [did so] once we started getting customer traction, once they started seeing that curve go up.”
The company tracked its first $1 million in assets within 27 days, doubled that figure in just five more days, and reached $5 million logged assets before fundraising commenced. Unvault secured early-stage capital most recently in June 2026, with the amount undisclosed.
Prioritizing Customer Feedback to Drive Growth
Singhvi and Reddy have consistently emphasized gathering customer feedback to refine Unvault’s offerings. Their creative approaches include placing golden eggs in Dolores Park to attract attention and solicit opinions. This feedback loop has not only validated their product but also guided the addition of new features.
Current customer requests include tracking inherited assets and expanding beyond jewelry to encompass other valuables such as silverware and collectibles. Bloomberg reports that older generations are set to transfer $93 trillion in assets to heirs over the next two decades, positioning Unvault to play a critical role in this wealth transition.
Looking ahead, Singhvi is eager to develop Unvault’s inheritance feature and continue listening to customers, emphasizing the broader lesson for entrepreneurs: “Whatever way you can get customer feedback, and customer feedback at some scale, is great. That will just help building the product, help you be a better founder, and then also help you raise money eventually.”
Key Takeaways
- After graduating with her MBA, Singhvi aimed to tap into a $750 billion business opportunity.
- She co-founded Unvault in 2025, a platform allowing users to track the value of their jewelry and sell it.
- Singhvi continues to prioritize customer feedback to introduce new, in-demand features.
For more details on Nidhi Singhvi’s innovative approach to unlocking the value of personal gold assets, read the full article Here.
