How are Indian watch brands staying relevant in the age of smartwatches?

Navigating the competitive market of watches in India can be culturally rewarding for homegrown labels 

Let me ask you a simple question: How do you check time? Is it by looking at your phone or that device on your wrist? We live in times when everything we own needs to be able to multitask, just like our ability to do so in our professional lives. This philosophy of multitasking now also holds true for a watch, whose job was to just tell the time. That was, however, before the arrival of smartwatches. Now a watch can check your heartbeat, count your steps, make calls and even track your sleep—apart from the basic function of telling the time.

Earlier this year, India surpassed China to become the second largest smartwatch market in the world for the first time in the June quarter, according to a report released by Counterpoint Research. The United Kingdom-based market research firm noted that the smartwatch shipments in India grew 347 per cent year-on-year during the quarter while the global market grew at just 13 per cent. This significant rise can be attributed to the quality of life of Indians living in tier-1 and tier-2 cities, with disposable income to splurge on either wearable tech or a luxury timepiece. Brands such as Omega, Rado and Tissot are invested in expanding their product portfolio to strengthen their position in the Indian market, as areport by Mordor Intelligence suggests.

But amidst the hype of owning logo-driven luxury labels or wearable tech to track your every move, smaller homegrown brands are going back to making devices that are primarily keepers of time and offer a sentimental value. We spoke to three watchmakers and entrepreneurs to understand how they are staying relevant, the challenges they face and what the future looks like for homegrown watchmakers.

The luxury of being relevant

For a vast majority of people in India, a modestly priced brand like Titan is usually a go-to option when picking up a watch for the first time. According to Mordor Intelligence, Titan is the most dynamic participant in the market that has segmented and developed different sub-brands for each segment. As your purchasing power  expands, brands like Apple, Michael Kors, Fossil and Swatch are attractive with their trendy designs, until you decide to move to serious watches as your disposable income grows, which Nirupesh Joshi, the co-founder of Bangalore Watch Company, points out. “This market of ‘serious watches’ is pretty wide—you have watches starting from one lakh that go up to multiple lakhs. But we, as a brand, have sustained for the last five years because of our storytelling as compared to a popular brand name. People do not wear watches to tell the time anymore—even your washing machine can tell you what time it is. You wear a watch because there is an emotional connection with it. We believe we're presenting people with this storytelling that allows them to create their own emotional bonds with their watches,” says Joshi, a former tech consultant who started a watch label with his wife after getting inspired by the craftsmanship of Swiss labels and luxury watches while living overseas.

For Joshi and his wife, storytelling is at the heart of their brand. Their collection of timepieces is divided into three categories—one is inspired by the humble beginnings of India’s space journey, another pays a tribute to India’s obsession with cricket and the third tells the story of Bangladesh’s Liberation Movement. “There is a rising class of Indians, younger people, who are asking questions like where is this made, what's the story behind this product, is it just a brand name slapped on my wrist, or is it something beyond that? Although there are multiple luxury international watch brands in India, none of those brands present Indian customers who are woke, young and discerning the options that brands like us will provide,” explains Joshi.

Compared to their international counterparts, it is authenticity that keeps Gaurav Mehta’s Jaipur Watch Company relevant. “My Indian tag is my USP. We have created its niche in the market during the past decade by offering design propositions, stories and concepts through watches which are Indian in nature,” says Mehta, who started a bespoke watch company to make handcrafted timepieces that tell the history of our country by using coins from the British era that are turned into dials. It’s the uniqueness of each timepiece that makes it a collectable item. So whether the watch costs a few hundred rupees or over a lakh, the stories and the inspirations are the threads that keep homegrown watch labels attractive, appealing and pertinent, even in the times of wearable tech and Swiss watchmakers.

Passing through challenging times

While storytelling is the trump card for several Indian watch brands, it’s tough to survive in a market that is flashing with international logos and labels when it comes to the premium and luxury sectors. “To a large extent, India is a polarising market. It seems to either award a price-sensitive approach or the luxury lane. While premium has its place, it's definitely a tough space to crack as people generally assume that a competing Western brand is probably better, which is not necessarily true,” says Reet Sawhney and Yankee Chhabra, co-founders of Wode, a Mumbai-based watch label that features minimal and mindful timepieces, starkly different from the bulky chronographs and smartwatches that the market is flooded with.

For Mehta, too, it’s been a tough ride. “We entered the market in 2013 when there was no concept of an Indian-origin luxury watch brand. Being the first mover in the market comes with its own advantages and a lot more disadvantages as well. We had to create a market, we had to convince the clients that Indian-origin brands can be equally good, if not better. At the same time, retailers were not willing to take us on board due to the mindset of  ‘how can an Indian brand be expensive’,” Mehta explains, who eventually managed to raise funds from external investors which helped him build confidence in the brand and among the consumers too.

Facing the future

Although the journey for most of these homegrown watchmakers has not been easy, business, in terms of revenue, hasn’t been too bad for Mehta’s Jaipur Watch Company. “We are growing at a rapid pace. Jaipur Watch Company has quadrupled its sales (from last year) in 2022. With a good strategy and the right set of investors, we are aiming to get to a 100-crore figure in the next five years,” says Mehta. The label is also in the process of opening two stores–one in Jaipur and another one in New Delhi. 

For Sawhney and Chhabra, the focus is to expand their product offerings and provide a wider net when it comes to online distribution, both domestically and globally. “We are experimenting with design while retaining our minimalist roots. One such example is our anti-clockwise range which looks like a simple watch, but is unlike anything else available in the market. It would be interesting to see how these experiments are received and impact our business growth and the way forward,” says the duo.

But compared to the growth rate of wearable tech devices and the rising appeal of international brands, how are these homegrown labels going to sustain themselves and carve out their own niche? Joshi drops an interesting nugget to answer this. “While people are wearing smartwatches, there is an increased consciousness about wanting to disconnect. So yes, people will continue to wear smartwatches but they will wear it only for reasons of health and fitness. They will not wear it for constantly wanting to be notified about your WhatsApp group messages on your list–no one wants that anymore. A luxury watch will never replace a health-and- fitness device and vice versa. But if you’re gifting a watch to someone for a special occasion, you’d rather give a luxury watch which would have sentimental value for a few decades, instead of a smartwatch which you’d probably have to upgrade every two years. A luxury automatic watch, which functions on just physics, with no batteries (which is all our watches) runs for longer than 30 years if you take good care of it. The emotions attached to a device like that will never fade, which is a hard argument about any electronic device slapped on your wrist,” he concludes.

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