Strota Research

Tanishq vs Malabar gold plans: what your ₹5,000 a month really earns

By Strota Newsroom · 2026-10-26 · How Strota reports

goldjewellerygold savings plansTanishqMalabar Goldrecurring deposit

We read the terms of two popular jeweller gold plans and ran ₹5,000 a month through each. One beats a bank RD on paper. The other depends on the piece you pick. Both tie you to one shop.

Many Indian families save for wedding and festival jewellery through a jeweller's monthly gold plan. It is a common habit before Dhanteras. We read the terms of two popular plans, Tanishq Golden Harvest and Malabar Golden Glitz. Then we ran ₹5,000 a month through each one, to see what a family really gets back.

How much does Tanishq Golden Harvest really give you?

With Tanishq, you pay a fixed amount for ten months, which adds up to ₹50,000. After about a year, the plan matures. You can then buy jewellery worth ₹53,750 from the shop. The extra money is a discount on your bill. It is not interest paid out to you.

Is a jeweller gold plan better than a bank RD?

Your money went in slowly, month by month, so most of it waited less than a year. Counted that way, the discount works out to about 12.11% a year. A bank recurring deposit would need to pay 11.59% a year just to keep up. If your family already plans to buy jewellery from that shop, this is a real gain, not a trick.

The discount always equals three-quarters of one month's payment, so it grows with what you pay. Timing matters too. Wait until day 399 to buy, and the yearly return slips to about 10.52%. That is because your money sat idle for longer. There is also a catch. These are buying plans, not savings plans. The money never comes back as cash. It comes back only as jewellery, from that one shop, and all in one go. Miss a payment or close early, and the discount shrinks. So the fair comparison is the plan versus paying the same shop in cash later.

How does Malabar's Golden Glitz plan work?

Malabar works differently. You pay eleven monthly instalments, so you put in ₹55,000 in total. The reward is not a flat discount on the bill. Instead, you get 75% off the making charge. That is the fee the jeweller adds for crafting the piece. It changes from design to design, and Malabar does not publish one rate. So we tested a few sample levels.

Take a light, simple piece first. If its making charge is 8% of the gold value, you save ₹3,300. That is a modest reward for a year of saving. The saving climbs as the design gets more detailed.

Now take a heavy, detailed piece. With a 20% making charge, you save ₹8,250. So the plan is worth a lot on an intricate necklace. It is worth little on a plain chain or bangle, where making charges are low. These levels are our own examples, not Malabar's real charges. Stop early, and the making-charge discount gets smaller.

Which plan gives you more grams of gold?

The biggest difference is how each plan sets the gold rate. Tanishq uses the rate on the day you buy. Malabar takes the average of the rates on every date you paid. That means a Tanishq saver holds rupees, not gold, while saving. If prices rise, you get fewer grams. If prices fall, you get more. A Malabar saver, in effect, buys a little gold each month.

This past year shows why that matters. Gold shot up to a sharp peak in January, then eased back by October. Using the averaged rate, Malabar's ₹55,000 bought 4.13 g of gold. The same money at the late-October rate would have bought more, because the price had come down.

On the Tanishq side, ₹53,750 at the late-October rate buys 4.35 g. That figure already includes the Tanishq discount. Malabar's making-charge saving comes on top of its grams. Had the Tanishq purchase landed at the January peak, it would have bought far less gold. So in a year when gold fell back, buying on the day came out ahead. In a year when gold keeps rising, averaging would do better. Nobody knows in advance which way the price will move.

How we checked: we read the full terms of both plans on the jewellers' own websites on 26 October 2026. We modelled a family paying the same monthly amount into each plan for about a year. For Tanishq, we worked out the yearly return of the payments against the jewellery value at the end. We then found the bank RD rate that would match it, with quarterly compounding as Indian banks use. Gold rates are the world price, turned into rupees on each payment date.

The limits are real. Jewellers can change their terms, and Tanishq says it may alter its benefits without notice. Our gold rates leave out import duty, GST and the jeweller's own rate. So they show the direction of the effect, not the exact grams. We left out Kalyan, Joyalukkas and others, because their full terms were not readable on their own websites. A jeweller plan is also not a bank deposit, and nothing insures your payments. These plans run under a year for a reason. Commentators read the 2014 deposit rules this way. An advance avoids counting as a deposit only if goods arrive within 365 days.

Frequently asked questions

Is Tanishq Golden Harvest worth it?

On ₹5,000 a month, the Tanishq discount works out to about 12.11% a year. It only pays off if you were going to buy jewellery from Tanishq anyway, because the money never comes back as cash.

How does the Malabar gold scheme work?

In Malabar's Golden Glitz plan you pay eleven monthly instalments and then get 75% off the making charge on gold ornaments. The saving is large on intricate pieces with high making charges and small on plain ones.

Is a jeweller gold scheme the same as a bank deposit?

No. A jeweller gold plan is not a bank deposit, and no deposit insurance stands behind your payments. The money comes back only as jewellery from that one jeweller.

Sources and method

This note is based on Strota's own backtest research. Historical results are not forecasts or investment advice; see the editorial standards for methodology and limitations.