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This 20-Year-Old From Madhyamgram Is Crafting Her Own Identity — One Jewel at a Time

Sulagna Sarkar from Madhyamgram, West Bengal, is building sudh.co.in — a handcrafted jewellery brand spanning terracotta, oxidised, and silver replica styles. At 20, she is crafting her identity alongside her studies.

PTI3 min read
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This 20-Year-Old From Madhyamgram Is Crafting Her Own Identity — One Jewel at a Time

A terracotta jewellery piece handcrafted by Sulagna Sarkar for her brand sudh.co.in, Madhyamgram, West Bengal

There is a small corner of Madhyamgram, North 24 Parganas, where terracotta meets oxidised silver, where a college notebook lies next to a half-finished pendant, and where a young woman named Sulagna Sarkar is building something the world has not quite seen yet. Sulagna started making jewellery in 2024. Not because she was trained. Not because her family was in the craft. But because she watched her mother run a saree business alone and thought: if she can do it, so can I. That conviction — quiet, stubborn, and entirely her own — is now a brand. It is called sudh.co.in. **Four Styles, One Maker** Sulagna's catalogue spans terracotta, oxidised, anti-tarnish, and silver replica jewellery. Each style draws a different kind of buyer. Each demands a different kind of patience. And Sulagna makes all of it herself — sourcing raw materials from Bally, West Bengal, shaping each piece by hand, and spending 40 to 45 minutes on every single one. There is no assembly line. No shortcuts. Just hands, material, and time. **A Partnership Built on Trust** Behind the brand is a second name: Dhruba Dey. Sulagna's friend and collaborator handles the digital side — sudh.co.in lives because of him. It is a clean division of labour built on trust: Sulagna makes, Dhruba presents. Most of sudh's sales today happen through a B2B model — jewellery sold to resellers who reach the final buyer. Sulagna knows this is not the endgame. She wants to reach buyers directly. She wants them to know her name before they know her price. **The Hardest Part Is Not the Craft** Ask Sulagna what is most difficult about running sudh alongside college, and she will not say the sourcing or the production. She will say the clock. Deadlines from college. Production schedules for orders. Packing and delivering while keeping up with academics. It is a daily negotiation — and there is no one to negotiate it for her. **Building Toward Recognition** What Sulagna is working toward is not just more sales. It is the moment when someone picks up a piece of jewellery, turns it over, and says: this is hers. This is unmistakably hers. She said it simply, in her own words: "I want people to see my work. I want to build my own identity through it." In a country where millions of artisans make beautiful things in anonymity, that sentence carries weight. Sulagna Sarkar is choosing to be known. And she is building the proof, one piece at a time.

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