Startup Turns Home Jewelry Into Mapped Wealth, Reporting More Than $150 Million Unlocked

Unvault founder Nidhi Singhvi built a business that photographs and appraises household jewelry, then gives owners a clear record and a pathway to sell — a service that has so far helped users realize more than $150 million in value. The company records each step on video, runs pieces through lab-style analysis and produces a separate valuation and fee summary for every single item, Singhvi said in a recent interview.

Singhvi traces the idea back to her upbringing in Jaipur, India, where families count gold as part of their net worth. After studying for her MBA and living in the U.S., she grew frustrated by the haphazard ways people buy and sell worn or broken ornaments — often in pawn shops or at neighborhood jewelers that offer little transparency. She launched Unvault in 2025 to make those household holdings easier to inventory and monetize, targeting what she describes as a multi-hundred-billion-dollar opportunity.

The product workflow is deliberately visible: customers ship items in insured packaging, watch a video of staff unboxing and handling each piece, and receive lab-assisted tests that report karat levels to two decimal points. The platform then lists a value for every article and provides an itemized breakdown of fees. Early adoption was brisk — Unvault logged its first $1 million of client assets within 27 days and hit $2 million five days later. By the time the founders began raising external capital they had tracked about $5 million; the company closed an early-stage round in June 2026 for an undisclosed amount.

Finding investors wasn’t seamless. Some venture backers told Singhvi they were looking for firms with the potential to reach astronomical valuations and questioned whether a jewelry-focused service could fit that mold. She pushed back by pointing to historical demand for physical ornamentation and the sizable wealth that will transfer between generations in coming years. Industry observers say the real test for investors is evidence of sustained user demand. “Venture firms move when the curve is unmistakable,” said Dana Morris, a consumer-goods analyst at Beacon Research. “Once a startup demonstrates repeatable behavior from users, the conversation changes.”

Customer input has steered many product choices at Unvault. The founders have run guerrilla-style marketing and feedback campaigns — including placing eye-catching items in public spaces to spark conversation — and they now hear frequent requests to add inherited pieces and to widen coverage to silver flatware and collectible items. Bloomberg recently estimated older cohorts will hand down roughly $93 trillion over the next 20 years, a transfer that could make traceable, legally documented heirlooms more valuable. Singhvi says an inheritance-tracking feature is high on the roadmap.

For entrepreneurs, Singhvi’s advice is simple: build in ways to collect customer reactions at scale. She credits that feedback with product improvements, sharper fundraising conversations and clearer market signals. Unvault’s approach has turned a traditionally opaque sector into a more auditable and sellable pool of household wealth — and its founders are betting there’s room to expand that utility well beyond jewelry.