December 2025 | 1434 words | 6-minute read
Titan Company's Light Scope
At Titan Company’s R&D centre in Hosur, engineers have developed Light Scope, an innovative instrument that quantifies a diamond’s brilliance, fire, and scintillation—factors previously difficult to measure and communicate. Unlike gold, diamonds’ visual appeal depends on complex light interactions, leading to inconsistent customer experiences. Light Scope, using AI and proprietary algorithms, provides objective scores for these optical phenomena, transforming diamond shopping into a science-backed, transparent process. Deployed in select Tanishq stores and Diamonds Expertise Centres, Light Scope strengthens Titan’s competitive edge, enhances customer trust, and sets new industry standards, supporting growth in India’s rapidly expanding diamond market and premium segments.
Titan Company's Light Scope
Titan Company’s R&D centre in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, has developed Light Scope, an innovative device that quantifies the elusive beauty of a diamond’s sparkle—a challenge jewellers have faced for centuries. Unlike gold, whose purity is easily measured, a diamond’s visual appeal stems from complex light interactions within its crystal structure, making two diamonds with identical 4Cs (carat, colour, clarity, cut) appear different.
Light Scope scientifically measures a diamond’s brilliance (white flashes), fire (coloured flashes), and scintillation (sparkles), transforming diamond shopping into a data-driven experience and giving Titan a competitive edge, much like the Karatmeter did for gold in the 1990s. Titan’s patented nano-faceting process etches thousands of microscopic prisms onto diamonds, intensifying their light properties. Light Scope was created to objectively demonstrate these enhancements, especially for premium Celeste solitaires, and has evolved from a manual viewer to an industrial-grade system using AI and proprietary algorithms to analyze light performance.
The device comes in two versions: one for retail spaces and another for backend quality checks, both creating controlled lighting environments to isolate and measure optical phenomena. Since its successful debut in Dubai, Light Scope has expanded across Tanishq’s network, with plans for over 1,000 devices by 2027. The technology, also featured in Diamonds Expertise Centres developed with De Beers, positions Tanishq as a leader in scientific diamond assessment, fostering transparency and trust. By quantifying diamond beauty, Tanishq aims to set new industry standards, enhance customer loyalty, and capture a larger share of the global diamond market.
Titan Company's Light Scope
Titan Company’s R&D centre in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, has tackled a centuries-old challenge: quantifying the elusive beauty of a diamond’s sparkle. While gold’s purity is easily measured, a diamond’s visual appeal depends on complex interactions between light and its crystal structure, leading to significant variation in appearance even among diamonds with identical grades for carat, cut, colour, and clarity. This inconsistency frustrates both retailers and customers, highlighting the need for a scientific approach to diamond evaluation.
Titan’s answer is the Light Scope, an innovative instrument that measures a diamond’s light performance—specifically, its brilliance (white flashes), fire (coloured flashes), and scintillation (sparkles). Like the Karatmeter, which revolutionised gold retail in the 1990s by providing precise purity measurements, Light Scope aims to bring objectivity and trust to diamond shopping, especially in premium segments where scientific validation is increasingly demanded.
India’s diamond market, now valued at $9 billion and projected to double by 2030, is rapidly growing. Titan’s differentiated strategy includes the launch of Tanishq’s Celeste solitaires, which use patented nano-faceting: thousands of microscopic prisms etched onto a diamond’s surface to intensify its light properties. However, traditional store lighting could not fully showcase the enhanced sparkle of Celeste diamonds. The need arose for a tool that could both demonstrate and quantify these enhancements for customers and provide quality checks before and after nano-faceting.
With no affordable, precise, and repeatable solution available, Titan’s engineers developed Light Scope from first principles. Since December 2022, the device evolved from a manual viewer to an industrial-grade system using image processing, AI, and proprietary algorithms. Light Scope now comes in two versions: one for customer-facing retail use and another for backend quality checks. It creates three controlled lighting environments to isolate and measure brilliance, scintillation, and fire, using diffused white light, moving beams, and a pointed light source, respectively. The retail device places jewellery under an overhead camera, while the backend version rotates loose diamonds for grading.
Light Scope’s AI-driven analysis converts subjective visual qualities into quantifiable scores, overcoming challenges like the reflective interference of gold and intricate jewellery designs. If widely adopted, Light Scope could set new industry standards, reduce pricing disparities among visually different but similarly graded diamonds, and transform the buying journey into an educational, transparent experience.
Debuting in Dubai, Light Scope received enthusiastic feedback and boosted sales, prompting expansion to 100 devices across select Tanishq stores in India, with plans to reach 200 by November and eventually all Tanishq, Mia, and Zoya locations by 2027. The R&D team continues to refine the device and software, while staff and customers are educated about the new metrics.
In a competitive market, especially with the rise of lab-grown diamonds, Light Scope offers Tanishq a sustainable edge through technological leadership and trust. The device is also featured in Tanishq’s Diamonds Expertise Centres, developed with De Beers, where gemmologists use five advanced tools—including Light Scope—to scientifically demonstrate diamond quality in real time, further positioning Tanishq as a leader in precision and transparency in diamond retail.
In the heart of Titan Company’s R&D centre in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, engineers are solving a problem that has troubled jewellers for centuries — how to measure the unmeasurable beauty of a diamond’s sparkle.
The challenge is real. Unlike gold, whose purity can be definitively measured, a diamond’s visual appeal relies on a series of complex interactions between light and its internal crystal structure. Two diamonds, identical in carat weight, cut, colour and clarity grades, can look dramatically different under the same jewellery store lights. This is frustrating — for both retailers and customers.
Light Scope, an innovative instrument that measures a diamond’s light performance, is Titan Company’s solution to this problem. It transforms diamond shopping into a science-backed experience and is the company’s latest attempt to leverage technology for competitive advantage — using innovation to compete not only on price, but on precision and trust, much like how the Karatmeter revolutionised gold retail in the 1990s.
“This technology addresses a fundamental difficulty in diamond retail,” says Akesh Kumar, Deputy Group Manager – Research and Development, Titan Company. “While consumers are aware of the 4Cs — carat weight, colour, clarity and cut — the light performance of a diamond has so far been difficult to quantify and communicate effectively. With Light Scope, we can now quantitatively measure the brilliance [white flashes], fire [coloured flashes] and scintillation [sparkles] of a diamond. It acts as a diamond meter, like the Karatmeter Tanishq introduced for gold.” The company expects Light Scope to have a similar disruptive impact on diamond retail, particularly in premium segments where customers increasingly demand scientific validation of quality claims.
“We are the only Indian brand to offer nano-faceting in diamonds to enhance the diamond light performance and have the only device that measures the light performance of a diamond at product level,” says Mr Kumar. “Both these factors give us a competitive edge, helping us increase Tanishq’s customer loyalty to a higher figure. This in turn supports revenue generation by increasing the share from studded jewellery.”
Measuring the unmeasurable
In 2024, India surpassed China to become the world’s second-largest market for natural diamonds — valued at ~$9 billion and projected to double by 2030. Light Scope is part of Titan Company’s differentiated strategy to capture a larger share of the global diamond market.
“In 2022, Tanishq launched Celeste, a new category for solitaires,” says Mr Kumar. “Quality diamonds go through a patented nano-faceting process to enhance their light properties. Thousands of microscopic facets or nano prisms are etched onto the surface of a polished diamond. When white light hits these nano prisms, it splits into its intense rainbow of colours. This technology enhances both fire and brilliance remarkably.”
However, Tanishq soon realised that its traditional store lighting couldn’t fully showcase the enhanced beauty of Celeste diamonds. “It was difficult to provide different types of ambient lighting in stores,” says Mr Kumar. “We needed a tool to demonstrate and quantify the enhanced aspects of Celeste diamonds for customers, one that could also be used for quality checks on solitaires before and after nano-faceting.”
Faced with the lack of an affordable, precise, and repeatable solution in the market, Titan Company’s engineers took matters into their own hands. “Using the first principles of science and a dose of pragmatism, we built Light Scope, a first-of-its-kind device to measure the light performance of a diamond,” says Mr Kumar.
Decoding a diamond’s visual appeal
Diamond pricing: It is based on clarity, colour, cut, and carat weight. Flawless, colourless diamonds with an Excellent cut command higher prices.
What shoppers notice: How lively and radiant a diamond looks — technically known as light performance.
Light performance attributes:
Brilliance: White flashes from light reflected through the table facet (flat area)
Fire: Coloured flashes created when light disperses through the crown facet (tapered area)
Scintillation: Sparkles seen when the diamond, light, or viewer moves
Cracking the code
In development since December 2022, Light Scope has gone through many avatars, starting as a simple manual viewer and transforming into a vision-based, industrial grade system that analyses how light interacts with a diamond. The latest version showcases a significant increase in performance, with very high accuracy and repeatability.
Light Scope comes in two tailored variations — one for customer-facing, retail spaces and another for back end quality checks. The device creates three controlled lighting environments that isolate and measure three optical phenomena: brilliance (white light reflection), scintillation (sparkle intensity) and fire (coloured light dispersion). Diffused white light is used to measure brilliance, moving light beams gauge scintillation, and a pointed light source produces colour flashes that are used for fire analysis.
“In the retail device, the diamond jewellery is placed on a fixture, with the camera and lighting overhead,” says Mr Kumar. “The camera and lens are optimised based on the required resolution, field of view, frames per second, depth of field, etc. For the back end device, we configured the machine bottom up — with the camera placed down below — and added a motor to rotate the diamond, since only loose diamonds would be graded.”
Light Scope uses image processing, artificial intelligence (AI) and proprietary algorithms to capture and convert measurements into quantifiable scores, transforming subjective beauty into objective data. “Initially, we struggled to quantify diamonds set in jewellery because of gold’s reflection and intricate jewellery designs,” says Mr Kumar. “We now use an AI model for analysis and image processing for quantification.
If Light Scope achieves widespread adoption, Tanishq could establish new industry standards for diamond assessment and potentially reduce pricing disparities between diamonds with similar 4Cs but different visual performance characteristics. “Our aim is to set a new standard in natural diamond retail — one that goes beyond traditional display and transforms the buying journey into a transparent, educational, and truly immersive experience,” says Ajoy Chawla, Chief Executive Officer, Tanishq, Titan Company.
“By putting the power of information in our customers’ hands, we are enabling them to understand every facet of the diamond they choose — from its craftsmanship and sparkle to its origin and authenticity.”
Comparing a nano-faceted and traditional solitaire
Scaling scientific precision
Light Scope made its debut last year at a Dubai store, where it received an enthusiastic customer response and boosted sales. Encouraged by its success, the company expanded production and launched it in India. Today, 100 devices are deployed across select locations within Tanishq’s 500+ store network, with plans to double this number to 200 by November this year. “We are also placing 50-60 of them in our international stores soon,” says Mr Kumar. “The goal is to have a Light Scope in all our Tanishq, Mia and Zoya stores by 2027.”
With over 1,000 devices in production, the R&D team remains focused on refining the Light Scope. “We upgrade our software, based on user feedback,” says Mr Kumar. “These updates primarily enhance the user interface, while our core algorithms remain consistent. Parallelly, we are training our retail staff across hundreds of locations and educating consumers about these new performance metrics.”
The Diamonds Expertise Centre model
Tanishq is also strategically deploying Light Scope in its Diamonds Expertise Centres, developed in partnership with the De Beers Group, at select flagship stores. The centres aim to transform jewellery shopping into a scientific showcase, where trained gemmologists demonstrate diamond metrics in real time.
The Diamonds Expertise Centres have five advanced evaluation devices:
Light Scope, which serves as a light performance meter (see above)
SynthDetect, which distinguishes natural diamonds from synthetic ones and simulants
Clarity viewer to observe internal and external flaws
Marking viewer to identify the inscription of the Titan brand’s logo and the diamond’s universal identification number
Hearts and arrows tool to evaluate the optical symmetry of a diamond’s cut
Setting tomorrow’s standards
In an era of fierce competition and changing customer preferences, differentiation through measurement precision could prove decisive for Tanishq. With lab-grown diamonds gaining popularity for their affordability and sustainability, customers are increasingly demanding scientific validation of quality claims.
By deploying Light Scope, Tanishq is creating sustainable competitive advantages through technological leadership and reinforcing its premium positioning by demonstrating authenticity and quality. Trust becomes crucial when a customer is faced with two similar-looking diamonds and cannot distinguish between them. Scientific tools, like the Light Scope, provide that crucial element of trust.
—Kermin Bhot
