What does ₹1,034 crore actually buy you?

GRT Jewellers recently agreed to acquire 74.12% of Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri (TBZ) for up to ₹1,033.71 crore, making it the second-largest M&A transaction in India’s jewellery industry to date. The deal is still subject to regulatory approvals.

At first glance, it looks like a jewellery deal.

But I think there’s a more interesting M&A lesson here.

GRT isn’t just buying a jewellery business. It is buying distribution, geography, brand and decades of customer relationships.

TBZ brings 37 stores across 28 cities and 13 states, with most of that footprint outside GRT’s traditional southern India base. GRT currently has 68 stores in India and one in Singapore. Once completed, the transaction would take the combined Indian store network to more than 100 locations.

That is a very different proposition from opening 37 stores yourself.

You would otherwise have to find locations, build the brand, hire teams, develop customer trust and wait years for each location to mature.

An acquisition compresses all of that into one transaction.

And TBZ isn’t a distressed business being picked up simply because it is cheap.

FY26 revenue was approximately ₹3,203 crore, EBITDA was around ₹361 crore, and PAT was approximately ₹202 crore. Revenue grew 22% year over year, while EBITDA nearly doubled.

That makes the deal particularly interesting from an acquisition perspective:

What are you actually buying?

The P&L is one part of the answer.

The harder-to-replicate assets may be the stores, locations, brand recognition, customer relationships and market access sitting underneath it.

And this is where I think India gets particularly interesting for lower-middle-market investors.

There are a lot of established businesses where the obvious story is the current EBITDA.

But the more interesting question can sometimes be:

What would it cost - and how long would it take - to recreate everything the owner has already built?

That is often where strategic acquisitions start to make sense.