Know your Company - TITAN

TITAN - is a name synonymous with watches in India, while Tanishq is for Jewellery. As a company, while many of us may think watches could be their main business, TITAN draws 88% of its revenue from Jewellery segment 

TITAN has its registered office in Hosur, Tamilnadu.

Titan company commenced operations in 1984 under the name Titan Watches Limited. In 1994, Titan diversified into jewellery with Tanishq and subsequently into eyewear with Titan Eyeplus. In 2005, it launched its youth fashion accessories brand Fastrack. The company is the largest branded jewellery maker in India, with more than 80% of its total revenues coming from the jewellery segment. As of 2022, Titan has a 6% market share in India's jewellery market. As of 2019, it is also the fifth-largest watch manufacturer in the world.

History

1984–1990

Titan Company Limited was inaugurated on 26 July 1984 under the name Titan Watches Limited in Chennai. A plant was set up to manufacture quartz analog electronic watches in the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu, Ltd. Industrial area at Hosur. In November 1986, Titan Company and Casio signed a MoU proposing to manufacture 2 million digital and analog-digital watches. In 1989, a satellite case plant was set up in Dehradun, Uttarakhand at present with a manufacturing capacity of 500,000 watch cases annually.

1991–2000

In September 1993, the company changed its name to Titan Industries Ltd. as it ventured into other range of products other than watches.

In 1994, Titan launched its jewellery brand Tanishq.

In 1998, the company launched its watch & accessories brand, Fastrack, targeted at a younger audience in a bid to compete with Timex.

2001–2010

In 2001, Titan launched kids’ watches brand, Dash. The brand saw poor performance and was discontinued in 2003. In 2004, the company entered into an agreement with Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton Group, to service the latter's range of watches in India through its customer care centres. In 2005, Fastrack was positioned as an independent accessory brand targeting the urban youth. With the objective to become a fashion brand, Fastrack launched sunglasses in the same year and launched bags, belts and wallets in 2009.

In 2016, Titan opened prescription lens manufacturing facilities in Noida, Kolkata, and Mumbai to improve its order processing time. 

Taneira is an ethnic wear brand from Titan that retails hand-woven sarees from different weaving clusters of India.  The brand was launched in 2016.  The first retail store was opened in Bengaluru in 2017 with more stores followed in New Delhi and Hyderabad.

In 2016, Titan entered the wearable devices market by introducing its smartwatch, Juxt, made through a collaboration with Hewlett Packard. In 2017, the company launched a fitness tracker, named Gesture Band under its youth accessories brand, Fastrack. In the same year, it invested $3 million in a Singapore based wearable tech company, CoveIoT. In 2018, the company added new fitness tracker bands. The company had a 7.4% market share in the wearable devices market as of 2018.

In November 2020, Titan opened its first overseas Tanishq store in Dubai as well as an exclusive website for Dubai showcasing its collections.

Products

Watches

A Titan Octane series watch.

The watches division comprises brands Fastrack, Sonata, Raga, Nebula, Octane and Xylys. In 2011, the company secured licence for marketing and distribution of Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss watches. Favre Leuba was incorporated in 2012. In 2018, the division accounted for ₹2,126 crore in revenue which was 10% of the total of the company.

Eyewear

In 2007, Titan Industries forayed into the fashion accessories industry with the launch of sunglasses. It introduced Titan Eye Plus that makes frames, contact lenses, prescription eyewear, and sunglasses. The division accounted for ₹415 crore in FY 2016-17 maintaining a stable growth of 8%.

Jewellery

Xerxes Desai started the brand Tanishq in 1995. Zoya was launched in the luxury segment, while Mia, a sub-brand was under Tanishq for work-wear jewellery. Titan's total revenue grew 20.44% in 2017-18 to ₹15,656 crore, of which jewellery sales fetched ₹13,036 crore. In 2016, Titan invested in CaratLane. As of 2022, Titan has a 6% market share in India's jewellery market.

Perfume

In 2013, Titan launched six variants of perfume in the Indian perfume market under the brand name ‘Skinn’. They collaborated with world-renowned perfumers including Alberto Morillas and Olivier Pescheux.

Subsidiaries and affiliate companies

Titan Engineering & Automation Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Titan. It was formerly known as Titan-Precision Engineering Division. The company now deals in machine building, automation and component manufacturing.

Swiss watchmaker, Favre Leuba, was acquired in 2011 and incorporated as a subsidiary of Titan in 2012. The company was acquired for €2 million. Its headquarters in Solothurn, Switzerland.

In 2023 Titan Sold Favre Leuba To Ethos Watches.

Titan acquired a 62% stake in CaratLane 2016 for $50 million.

In Aug 2023 ,Titan has acquired another 27.18% stake in CaratLane Trading from the jewellery brand’s founder and his family for Rs 4,621 crore in cash, following which its stake in the company will increase to 98.28%.

Titan Watch Company Limited, Hong Kong, is currently a 100% subsidiary of Favre Leuba AG, Switzerland.

In 2015, Titan entered a joint venture to sell products of Swiss luxury brand Montblanc through its retail outlets. Titan's equity share in Montblanc India Retail Private Limited is 49% and Montblanc Services B.V. holds 51%.

Naming the baby - Tanishq

Tanishq, part of the Tata group, is today the market leader in branded jewellery in India.  Tanishq is such a beautiful brand name.  Have you ever wondered, how was this name born?  

Here is the story, narrated to me many years ago by the late Xerxes Desai, founder of Titan Company and also the creator of Tanishq.

"During the early days of jewellery export, we had used the brand name Celeste in the European market.  But we soon realised that Celeste had already been trademarked by another company in India.

So, we thought of the word Tanishq.  I was clear that the word should possess a feminine and Indian feel to it.  It would also be useful for the names of our two promoter Companies to be reflected in the name.  So, "Ta" stands both for Tata and Tamil Nadu, the two promoters of Titan.  "Nishq" means a piece of jewellery.

The name sounded even better when Fali Vakeel of our advertising agency Lintas pointed out to me that Tanishq, when sliced differently, is a combination of "Tan" (body) and "Ishq" (Love).  I thought to myself, oh my, these are words which go so well with jewellery.

But what is really interesting is how the name Tanishq began echoing in my mind at the very beginning.  I am fond of dogs, and I owned a Harlequin Great Dane at that time, called Monishqa.  Also, the young daughter of a close friend, whose brains we had picked in the early days of Titan, was name Monisha.  So, I used these names often, and I think they triggered Tanishq, which sounds quite similar!  When I tossed it around in my mind after that, this word sounded very poetic and beautiful." 

So, for Xerxes Desai, Tanishq it was.  A Tata brand that has gone on to transform the jewellery market in India, over the past three decades.