Gem Experience

Akshit Gokhroo grew up around gemstones before he ever thought to build a business around them — his family had long collected and cherished precious stones, and it was travel later in life, encountering artisans across different cultures, that turned a personal fascination into Gem Experience. Launched in 2022 and rooted in Tanzania's Merelani Hills, the brand has since grown outward into the UAE and India, though its heart stays close to home: the rare, richly colored gems — tanzanite, tsavorite, pink spinel, aquamarine, rhodolite — that East Africa is known for.

What sets Gem Experience apart is how much of the journey happens under one roof. Drawing on its parent company's three-decade history in sourcing, cutting, and polishing gems, GE controls its own mines and carries each stone through the full value chain — from the ground, through cutting and polishing, into finished pieces shaped by an in-house design team working alongside skilled Tanzanian artisans. It's a model built as much around traceability as beauty: knowing exactly where a stone came from, and ensuring the people who mined it were treated fairly along the way.

That commitment extends beyond the jewelry itself. GE has built two experiential museums, in Arusha and Manyara, offering visitors a close look at the history and significance behind the stones they might one day wear. The brand also supports the Maasai Women Project, weaving traditional beadwork made by Maasai artisans into its wider creative vision — work that carries its own heritage forward rather than simply borrowing from it. Rather than a straightforward retail experience, buying from Gem Experience is designed to feel like an education: a dedicated stylist walks each customer through the qualities of the stone in front of them, so that what they leave with feels less like a purchase and more like the start of a story they'll carry forward.