From Ratnapura to the World: My Journey with Sapphires

I still remember the smell of the gem pits in Ratnapura — wet earth, kerosene lamps, and the quiet excitement that hung in the air whenever a miner pulled up a fresh batch of gravel to wash. I was thirteen years old, tagging along on my uncle's gem buying trips, and I had no idea that those weekend journeys into Sri Lanka's gem country would end up defining the rest of my life.

Where it Began

My education started at S. Thomas' College, Mount Lavinia, a school known for turning out disciplined, well-rounded students — and looking back, that discipline served me well in an industry where patience and precision matter as much as passion. But my real education happened outside the classroom, on those long drives down to Ratnapura with my uncle. I would watch him examine parcels of rough stone under the sun, turn them slowly between his fingers, and explain what separated a fine sapphire from an ordinary one. I didn't know it then, but I was being trained by one of the best teachers I would ever have.

A Website Before Its Time

By 1997, the internet was still a novelty in Sri Lanka, but my brother and I had a feeling it was worth exploring. Together we built Ahmeds.com — not a gem business at all, but a personal site with e-pals and a page of recipes from our mother's cookbook. It was the kind of early, experimental website families put up in those first years of the web, more a hobby than a venture.

Then, out of nowhere, it earned me my first real lesson in the gem trade. A visitor to the site somehow found their way to me and got in touch asking about amethyst — simply because they'd seen I was based in Sri Lanka. I had grown up around sapphires, but amethyst wasn't something I knew well at the time, so I did what I'd always done — I called my uncle. He walked me through it, and I made the sale. It was a small transaction, but it planted a seed. I realized that if I wanted to be taken seriously in this business, I couldn't rely on family knowledge alone. I needed formal training.

Building a Foundation

In 2000, I enrolled in basic gemmology courses and formally registered my business, laying the groundwork for what would eventually become Crescent Gems. Around the same time, I opened a lapidary in 2001 — a small workshop dedicated to cutting and polishing stones. Being able to control the cutting process, not just the buying and selling, gave me a much deeper understanding of how a rough stone's potential is either unlocked or wasted at the wheel. It's one thing to know a fine sapphire when you see it; it's another to know how to bring out its best face.

Between 2001 and 2005, I made regular trips to Tucson, Arizona — home to the largest gem and mineral show in the world. Standing in those aisles, surrounded by dealers and buyers from every corner of the globe, gave me an education no classroom could offer. I learned how the international market thought about color, clarity, and value, and I began building relationships that would shape my business for years to come.

Deepening the Craft

By 2010, I felt it was time to formalize the knowledge I had been building through experience. I enrolled at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, to pursue higher studies in gemmology through the Department of Earth Resources Engineering. Sitting in lectures on crystallography and mineral optics, I found myself constantly connecting the science back to memories of that gem pit in Ratnapura — finally understanding, on a molecular level, what I had been taught to see with my eyes as a boy.

Sharing the Passion

Gemstones had given me so much, and by 2015 I wanted to give something back — a way to share that world with people who had never seen it. That's when I started Crescent Gem Tours as a hobby, taking visitors through the gem markets, mines, and cutting workshops of Sri Lanka so they could experience firsthand what I had experienced as a boy. It has since grown into a well-reviewed attraction on TripAdvisor, and to this day it remains one of the most rewarding parts of what I do — watching someone's eyes light up the same way mine did decades ago.

Reaching Further

In 2016, I began working with Mastercut Gems in North Carolina, who represented and sold my stones in the U.S. market — my first real foothold in America. That relationship eventually grew into something more permanent: in 2025, I registered Crescent Gems as a business in the United States, establishing a direct presence in a market I had been serving from a distance for nearly a decade.

Where I Am Today

Today, as Managing Director and Senior Gemologist of Crescent Gems, I bring together everything those years taught me — a boy's eye for a fine stone, a cutter's understanding of how to reveal it, a gemologist's scientific grounding, and a trader's sense of the global market. I'm also honored to serve as a government-appointed Advisor to the Sri Lanka Export Development Board on gemstones, a role that lets me contribute to the industry that shaped my entire life. Every article I write for this site draws on that same journey: decades spent among Ceylon sapphires, from the gem pits of Ratnapura to buyers around the world.

It has been, and continues to be, a journey I feel privileged to be on.