Page 12: 1977: A watershed moment. The Tata Press started thinking of watches under ‘The Watch Project’. In June, with $1024 Anil went to Germany for a 3-week trip to probe possibilities.
Side-story: The RBI rejected his forex application and was later sanctioned only because of some contacts the Tatas had with the RBI. Else, even this trip would not have been possible. (Bureaucracy pre-1984 was insane)
Page 21: The secretary of Ministry and Commerce dismissed the application to enter the watch making business saying that the Tatas would never be allowed to make watches as this sector was reserved for public and small-scale industries.
Page 21: In early 1985, with the change of government, a fresh application for a joint venture with the TN government was submitted. But, the Tata name was not a figure in this application. The fear was that some junior official would hold up the file so the application was given in the name of Questar Investments. Questar would later be taken over by the Tatas.
It took 8 years to wait through the government Bureaucracy to ultimately start manufacturing the watches
Page 95: A foreigner’s interpretation of India:
When billionaire chairman Fred Olson (the owner of Timex) visited India, he said, ‘If each housewife or entrepreneur were to open a little shop in her/his house to sell just two watches a year, that would amount to 1.3 million a year. Here’s a chance to capitalise on your rural market.
A trial run was done by loading a special bus with watches and entertainment material. This included a video to the movie, Sholay. Sales staff went to 25 villages in 10 days for promotions and sales offerings.
12lakhs were spent on the project. 2 watches were sold.
Page 97: A breakdown of the Titan-Timex relationship. The partnership lasted for 5 years in all. In 1997, the void left by Timex’s cheaper watches segment was filled by Titan launching the Sonata brand. It is India’s largest selling watch brand in terms of revenue.
Page 110: To prove Tanishq was indeed selling pure gold they had to import a machine that tests the purity of each jewellery. This costed about 10-12lakh each and was a huge investment to be made — especially because Tanishq was not making any money at that time.
The machine was then branded — Karatmeter. First ad to market this was in a newspaper saying, “There’s a thief in the family” — it then went on to talk about the “family jeweller”, a custom in India where everyone had a jeweller they’d buy from.
Customers could come and test the quality of gold for free. And jewellers started protesting.
Page 113: Despite these efforts, Tanishq was not making significant dents. Ratan Tata: “Is Titan a watch company with a a jewellery business or a jewellery company with a watch business?”
Page 116: Customer feedback on karatmeter: “All you do are things to make us feel bad” - in reference to finding out that their family jeweller has cheated them with impure gold. This insight drove the team to launch the famous 19=22 scheme. If the purity was lower than 22-carat and higher than 19-carat, Tanishq would exchange it for Tanishq’s 22-carat jewellery. The day it was launched, several of Tanishq’s stores registered sales over 1cr that day alone.
Page 146: The race to create the world’s slimmest watch.
Page 158: In 2002, Narayan Murthy wanted a custom made ‘Infy watch’ to mark the occasion of becoming a billion dollar company. He called the Titan team and said Infoscions travelled the world and needed a watch to show the local time of the country and India time at a glance. Within a few weeks a prototype was ready. In 2 months, 25,000 watches were delivered.
Page 172: Before developing the perfume brand Skinn, the taste of customers were gauged on the basis of researching involve 2000 customers across India. The research clearly revealed that Indian customers wanted to buy French created inspired perfumes because the romance associated with them.
Page 176: skinn became the first brand in India to run a television advertisement entirely in French to both emphasize its French percentage, and rise above the noise of the hundreds of ads that consumers are exposed to all the time in this competitive segment.
Page 177: To foster innovation in the company, in 2012. Titan came up with a program called ‘Ignitor’. The program was to open up the process of ideation on new businesses that Titan could get into. Anyone in the organisation could form teams and submit business ideas. 750 submissions were made. One of the ideas that emerged was to enter sarees as a business. Taneira was born.
Page 179: Tata’s commitment to CSR efforts, and the only time J.R.D, Tata got angry - The first and only time in 20 years. Why? Read the book 😉
Page 181: Titan exports watches to over 25 countries.