INDIA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH WATCHES
“When it comes to timepieces, Bengaluru has been a hub of watchmaking from the 60s, and the trend, no matter how niche, continues even today”
- Bangalore Edition, INDIATIMES, 5th August 2018
The Indian story on watchmaking:
The Story of Mass Indian Watch Manufacturers:
Two years ago, in September 2016, we saw the Indian government phase out the watch division of HMT (Hindustan Machine Tools). It was a brand founded in Bengaluru in 1961 and perhaps those much older than I may remember that the first set of manual winding watches were inaugurated by none other than Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
Technical collaborations with Japanese watch company Citizen saw HMT reach its peak in the 70s when supply was not able to meet the rising demand for watches. In 1981, another Public Sector Unit, Allwyn, entered the market in partnership with japanese giant, Seiko, but was still unable to fill the gap between supply and demand.
Sure, HMT watches were not as fine as some of the Swiss watches that one saw back in the day, but they were as Indian as any watch company could get - with its watches named Vijay, Sainik, Janata, Sona, etc and the letters ‘made in India’ proudly marked on the lower half of the dail, not to forget the commemorative editions made for anniversaries of the Indian Tobacco Company,etc.
Having observed the effect of the quartz revolution on the global market for watches, Tata saw an opportunity. In a joint venture with the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO), the Tata Group founded Titan Watches Limited in 1984. Titan set up a factory in Hosur (then, Tamil Nadu), hired a retiring executive director from HMT at the helm and decided to go with 100% quartz electronic watches. Titan’s first collection, ‘Titan Acura’ met with great success and today Titan holds roughly 60% of the market share.
62 | Jansher Aidan Bakhshi Nongrum | Product Design
India has had a unique relationship with the watch world. From European watch brands relying heavily on Indian patronage, to Indian watch Microbrands at the helm of what they hope will be looked down in history as the legacy of Indian Watch Making, we’ve got it all. There’s an interesting story on Cartier’s blog that talks about the Delhi Durbar of 1911, when Jacques Cartier opened boxes of glittering jewels only to find that the Maharajas wanted something more simple - Cartier’s Silver pocket watch. Several European Watch companies are known to have made exotic timepieces for Indian clients. Documented in the Cartier archives are orders like that from the Nawab of Rampur, who commissioned four carriage clocks to be designed to sound like European cathedral bells. Even Jaeger LeCoultre claims that their iconic Reverso model
