When a timely idea and Tamil Nadu helped with the birth of Titan

Tamil Nadu BJP chief K Annamalai’s recent slip-up over his “Rafale watch” has set state politics abuzz for over a week.

On December 17, state electricity minister V Senthilbalaji, in a series of tweets, raised doubts how the former IPS officer, who is said to have four goats and cows, could afford an expensive watch worth lakhs of rupees.

To that, Annamalai claimed that it was a “Rafale watch,” made from the same material the Rafale fighter jet is manufactured. Indeed, the watch by French watchmaker Bell & Ross, BR 03, is a limited-edition timepiece, born out of a collaboration with Dassault Aviation, which also builds the Rafale fighter jets, 36 of which India procured.

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Annamalai further said he was wearing the watch out of “patriotism,” since he cannot fly a Rafale jet. Well, if Annamalai wanted to wear patriotism on his sleeve, he could have gone for Indian-made watches, said critics.

This is the story of one such “Made In India” watch company that has its roots in Tamil Nadu.

When Tata wanted to diversify

It all began with Xerxes Desai, who returned from a three-year stint at City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) of Maharashtra to Tata Administrative Services (TAS) in 1975.

Educated at Oxford University, Desai joined TAS in 1961. He joined Taj Group and started building hotels. The Taj Coromandel in Chennai was built under his supervision.

During his secondment, he was assigned the job of turning the ailing Tata Press into a profitable venture by any means. Tata Press at that time was printing art and culture magazines, calendars, diaries, and computer stationery.

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Desai wanted to make something different. He and his colleagues went over various ideas, like manufacturing shipping containers, gelatine, and carbon black, which came from Minoo Mody, the first CEO of Tata Sons, the holding company of Tata Group. But none appealed to Desai.

Encounter with an epigraphist

This was when Desai had an encounter with the renowned epigraphist Iravatham Mahadevan, who then was an IAS officer serving in New Delhi.

“At that time, Mahadevan, an IAS officer of the Tamil Nadu cadre, was a joint secretary in the Ministry of Industrial Development in New Delhi. That apart, he was a Jawaharlal Nehru scholar on leave from the IAS, studying the Indus Script and using the computing facilities and expertise at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai to analyse the complete collection of discovered texts with a view towards printing and publishing it as a concordance (a comprehensive appearance-based alphabetical list). The computerized analysis was nearing completion and Mahadevan was at his wit’s end trying to locate a printer who could handle an unknown and unreadable script. One day, Dr Mathai Joseph who headed the computer science facility at TIFR and was a friend of Xerxes’s wife Rajani, called Xerxes and asked if Tata Press would like to take a look at it,” writes Vinay Kamath in his book Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand.

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Tata Press showed an interest in catering to the needs of Mahadevan. During the process, Desai shared his dream of starting a new project but with a lack of ideas. Mahadevan, through his offices, sent in some ideas, ranging from manufacturing ophthalmic glass to granite tombstones to mechanized fishing boats to watches. Desai zeroed in on watches.

Tamil Nadu’s invitation to Tata

At that time, Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) was the only significant Indian watchmaker. It was also the time when Indians started to search for modern, affordable watches with new designs. To be precise, they wanted something like a Swiss watch. The Tatas believed they could make new-generation watches.

But they did not have the technical know-how. Even HMT was taking help from the Japanese watchmaker Citizen. Around that time, the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO) was in dialogue with France Ébauches, a French watchmaker, to manufacture watches. But they were unable to find a suitable industry partner.

This time, in 1979, Iravatham Mahadevan, who was posted as chairman and managing director of TIDCO, invited Tata to take up the project. Tatas immediately accepted the offer and, thus, Titan was born. The first two letters in “Titan” stand for Tata Industries, and the remaining letters for Tamil Nadu.

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In 1983, the Tata Group, TIDCO, and France Ébauches entered an alliance in Paris. The state immediately allocated 15 acres at the industrial park developed by State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu (SIPCOT) in Hosur, Dharmapuri district.

The manufacturing of Titan wristwatches started in 1986, and the first sales began in 1987. On March 11, 1988, JRD Tata dedicated the manufacturing complex to the country, and the rest, as they say, is history.