BENGALURU: Many in Karnataka know Rajesh Mehta for his Shubh, Laabh, and Oyzterbay jewellery stores. The three brands for a while looked like they could together take on the might, and replicate the success of the other Bengaluru-headquartered national biggie-Tanishq.But that was not to be. As Mehta struggled with Sebi investigations in the past few years, all of those brands wound down. Oyzterbay shut down a long time ago, even before the investigations. Laabh went the same way. Just a few Shubh stores still operate. Mehta went back to focusing on what he had started with – gold refining, manufacturing, and trading.Mehta’s roots trace back to a Gujarati family that migrated from Rajkot to Bengaluru shortly after Independence. His father, Jaswantrai Mehta, traded in semi-precious stones and later started Rajesh Diamond Company. The venture was named after Rajesh, the third of four sons, following an astrologer’s prediction that he would bring prosperity to the family. In the early 1980s, Rajesh and his brother Prashant borrowed Rs 1,200 from their elder brother and began trading silver jewellery. The business soon expanded into gold jewellery trading after the brothers secured a licence under the Gold (Control) Act. In 1989, Mehta set up a small export-oriented gold jewellery manufacturing unit in the garage of his RT Nagar home in Bengaluru. That venture would eventually become Rajesh Exports. The company grew rapidly, moving from jewellery exports into manufacturing, refining and eventually retailing, was listed on the stock exchanges in 1995, and later built a 10-acre manufacturing facility in Whitefield which employs 300 people.While Oyzterbay’s acquisition in 2006 brought Mehta into the broader public eye, it was the launch of Shubh in 2010 that briefly electrified the jewellery market with its pricing model under which buyers would be charged only the stated rate-per-gram. In 2006, Rajesh Exports’ revenue was about $1 billion. Ten years later, it stood at $24 billion. But net profits remained relatively small, given low margins in the business.Another defining moment came in 2015, when he acquired Swiss precious-metals refinery Valcambi for $400 million in an all-cash deal. The acquisition transformed the company into a global gold player, and publications ranked Mehta among India’s wealthiest businessmen.In 2022, he announced plans to invest about Rs 24,000 crore to set up what it described as India’s first advanced Amoled display manufacturing facility in Telangana. As of now, this project too seems to have reached a dead-end because of the Sebi investigations. When we spoke to him on Thursday, Mehta sounded confident that he could convince Sebi his dealings are above board. Time will tell.