Mechanical watchmaking is entering an important phase in India, driven by a growing consumer appreciation for craftsmanship, engineering and the experience of owning a watch with a mechanical heart, said Kuruvilla Markose, CEO, Watches at Titan Company Ltd.
The context: India, also global markets, is undergoing a massive structural shift away from mass-market quartz watches to premium mechanical and automatic watches. Although, quartz still dominates the overall sales volumes because of its affordability, consumer interest for deeply designed wares, fast-pace of growth and value are heavily tilting toward mechanical horology, as watches have emerged to fashion or lifestyle statements from just being from a mere time-showing devices. A quartz watch is an electronic device powered by a battery, whereas a mechanical watch is a micro-engine powered by a tightly wound spring.
“We have seen the category gain significant momentum, with Titan’s mechanical watch business growing nearly fivefold over the last three years,’’ Mr. Markose told The Hindu.
Titan is expecting the segment to grow from around ₹270 crore last year to approximately ₹350 crore end of the current fiscal. “The broader opportunity is also being shaped by premiumisation, with watches above ₹25,000 growing at a significantly faster pace than the overall market,’’ he added.
To add momentum to growth of this rapidly expanding segment, Titan Company is making a strategic push into premium mechanical watchmaking by designing and branding its own in-house movement, Vetra. It embodies Titan’s philosophy of elegant ingenuity anchored in solving the most demanding challenges with clarity, precision and purpose, bringing artistry and mechanics into a single, cohesive whole. This bold venture allows the company to develop advanced precision engineering capabilities while significantly strengthening its presence in the competitive global horology market.
According to Mr. Markose, Vetra is Titan’s branded in-house automatic movement platform, built around the 7A architecture, which provides a common mechanical foundation from which the company can develop different watch propositions and complications. ``Having greater ownership of the movement gives our engineering and design teams more flexibility to develop the movement and the watch together, rather than designing around the limitations of an externally sourced catalogue movement,’’ he explained adding, this allowed Titan to progressively develop capabilities across different mechanical functions and propositions, including open-heart constructions, GMT and date complications.
He further said, Titan Automatics was the consumer expression of this capability, bringing together different applications of the Vetra platform. The collection includes the Infinium, which uses the Vetra 7A20+ movement with a 72-hour power reserve, alongside other propositions such as Dualis, Midnite and Atrium. “The move from our earlier 7000-series mechanical platforms, which generally offered around 36 to 40 hours of running time, to a 72-hour power reserve represents a meaningful step in our mechanical movement capability,’’ he claimed. The longer reserve has involved optimisation of how energy was stored and delivered within the movement, including the barrel and mainspring arrangement, he explained.
Every Vetra movement was assembled by hand and individually tested, and Titan was continuing to deepen its capabilities across this value chain. Movement R&D, precision component manufacturing, tooling, assembly and validation all need to come together to produce sophisticated mechanical movements consistently and at scale. ``Our larger ambition is to create watches that are imagined in India, engineered in India and built with the capabilities to engage consumers around the world. Vetra and Titan Automatics were an important part of that journey, as the company continued to build the engineering and manufacturing depth that could help India establish a stronger presence in modern horology, Mr. Markose further said.
The new collection of watches, designed on Vetra platform, were expected to offer watch connoisseurs and enthusiasts an experience of a new expression of Titan’s mechanical watchmaking, where the craft of the movement would be as much a part of the experience as the watch itself, said the Bengaluru-based watch manufacturer.
Earlier, officially announcing Vetra, Rahul Shukla, Vice-President and Chief Sales & Marketing Officer- Watches Division at Titan Company said, “Vetra firmly places Titan within a relatively small global community of watchmakers building in-house mechanical capabilities, while contributing to the emergence of a stronger indigenous horological ecosystem in India.’’
More importantly, it marked a significant stride in strengthening the country’s position in modern horology, Mr. Shukla added.
Other Titan Company officials at a factory-visit (Hosur) organised for the media fraternity recently said: For more than four decades, Titan, has pursued watchmaking with an ambition that extends well beyond the dial. Each milestone has brought greater depth in craft, engineering and innovation, evolving beyond the creation of timepieces to forge a distinct horological identity as much for the brand as for India’s emerging watchmaking stature.
