Installing the apps for Jar, Safegold, or Gullak is disarmingly simple. Enter a phone number, wait a few seconds for the one-time password, and just like that, the platforms set up daily micro-savings accounts for digital gold. The Ken tested all three apps, and it’s impressive how frictionless this onboarding process is.

This ease of investment is a big part of why these platforms are thriving. Take Jar—the poster boy of the digital-gold space in India—for instance. In December 2024, the company’s co-founder Nishchay Ag tweeted that the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) had skyrocketed more than 10XXJar went from Rs 23 cr ARR in Dec 2023 to Rs 270 cr ARR in Dec 2024 from December 2023 to December 2024.  Its peer, Gullak, too, reported a similar jump in its revenue over the past year, owing to a strong festival season and a big boost in new customersFinancial ExpressDigital Gold Platform Gullak logs over Rs 50-cr sales during recent festive season.

Digital gold—a modern way of owning gold through online vaults without physically holding it—appears to have finally found its footing in a country where the love for the yellow metal runs deepThe KenIndians and gold—old affair, new equations. 

While official numbers are scarce in the unregulated digital-gold market, the five gold industry experts The Ken spoke to, attest to the rise of digital gold as an investment, even in a market still largely ruled by physical gold.

“Digital-gold sales for the industry will now be close to Rs 600 crore ($73 million) a month, about 40% higher than a year back,” said Gaurav Mathur, founder of Safegold, a digital gold aggregator. That adds up to more than Rs 7,000 crore annually—not too far from gold exchange-traded fundGold ETFA Gold ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that aims to track the domestic physical gold price.