I didn’t know much about rudraksha when Vedikaura started. I knew what they were in a general way — the beads, the significance, the tradition. But I didn’t know what distinguishes one from another in a way that matters, or what to look for when evaluating whether something is genuine, or why the same mukhi could be priced so differently across suppliers.
Mohit knew all of this. Working alongside him over these months has been an education in a subject I would never have studied otherwise.
Some of what I’ve learned is botanical. Rudraksha are the seeds of the Elaeocarpus ganitrus tree, which grows primarily in certain parts of Nepal, Indonesia, and some regions in India. The quality of the bead — its surface, its mukhi definition, its weight, its uniformity — is influenced by altitude, climate, and how and when it’s harvested. Two beads that look similar to an untrained eye can be very different in terms of origin and quality.
Some of what I’ve learned is about the supply chain itself. There are many layers between the tree and the customer — harvesters, processors, wholesalers, distributors, and then whoever is selling to the end customer. At each stage, there are decisions made about what to pass on, what to blend, what to grade. The person at the end of that chain has almost no way to verify what happened earlier unless they either know the source personally or have developed enough expertise to read the bead itself.
Mohit has worked to develop relationships at the source level where we can. That doesn’t mean every product comes directly from a single artisan — that’s not always possible and it would be dishonest to claim it is. But it means we know more about origin than most sellers at our level, and we ask more questions.
The lesson I keep returning to is that “authentic” isn’t a binary. It’s not simply real versus fake. It’s a spectrum of knowledge, care, and traceability. The most honest thing a brand like Vedikaura can do is be transparent about what we know, what we don’t know, and what we’re still working to understand.
That honesty is harder to market than a confident claim. But I think it’s what actually builds trust over time.
Three things that changed how I think about sourcing in this category: spending time with the supplier before placing any order (not just exchanging messages), learning to read physical characteristics of the bead rather than relying entirely on documentation, and accepting that traceability is a direction of travel, not a destination you reach once and maintain effortlessly.