Titan

Titan Watches was incorporated in July 1984 as a joint venture between Tata Industries and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), a state body, with the backing of J. R. D. Tata.^1, 2, 3

Tata records that its founding managing director, Xerxes Desai, said the company “stumbled upon the opportunity to make watches almost accidentally”, after a call in 1977 about the most promising of five projects.²

The market it entered belonged to the state’s HMT: The Better India writes that HMT dominated the trade and that buyers often ordered months ahead. Hosur, where Titan built, lies about 40 kilometres from Bangalore, HMT’s home.^4, 5

For its movements Titan worked with France Ebauches, a maker of quartz analogue movements, Tata records.²

The opening of the Hosur factory is dated two ways: Titan’s heritage page gives 1987, while The Better India says J. R. D. Tata inaugurated it on 11 March 1988.^1, 4

Tata describes the Hosur plant as integrated, making virtually all the parts of a watch, and says that by 1987-88 Titan was the leading Indian producer of quartz analogue watches.²

The Better India dates the first Titan showroom, at Safina Plaza in Bangalore, to 23 December 1987, and the millionth Titan watch to 10 April 1989.⁴

A joint venture with Timex is dated from 1992 by both Titan and Wikipedia; Titan dates its end to 1998, Wikipedia to 1997. Titan says it launched the cheaper Sonata brand after the partnership ended, and Fastrack, for young buyers, in 2003.^1, 3

In November 2011 Titan bought the Swiss brand Favre-Leuba from the Spanish Val family and Maison Favre Leuba, for more than 13 crore rupees; in 2023 it sold the brand to the Indian retailer Ethos.^3, 6, 7

Titan Industries took the name Titan Company Limited in 2013.¹

Tata says Titan began work on mechanical movements of its own in 2011. Titan dates its Slim Mechanical Edge, with a movement 2.2 millimetres thick, to 2020 and says 81 of its 106 parts are made at Hosur; Tata’s account dates the Edge Mechanical to 2021.^1, 2

The Better India gives Titan’s output as 16.692 million watches a year.⁴