Titan: Wooing the value-conscious

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Titan Industries has been India’s largest watch brand for more than a decade now. But as it sought to extend its dominance to other categories, it faced an all new set of challenges. When it entered the mostly unorganised eyewear market with the Titan Eye+ range, it found a potentially lucrative market (up to 30 per cent of Indians requires vision correction) that was scattered and dominated by unbranded low-cost players.

“People face a largely unorganised, unstructured, non-transparent industry that offers products of extremely poor quality and finish,” says Ravi Kant, COO, Eyewear, Titan Industries. As the third major line of business—after watches and Tanishq, its jewellery line—Titan put all its marketing muscle behind its new initiative. “We not only stressed on quality, but also made eyewear fashionable,” says Bhaskar Bhat, MD, Titan Industries. Besides selling its own eyewear, Titan Eye+ has become a one-stop shop for global brands. “We are expanding at the rate of two stores a week. To support the store expansion process, we are focussing on ground-level activations,” says Kant.

As a dominant player in the organised watches segment—estimated at 42 million watches per annum— Titan’s key focus is on reinvigorating its brands and expanding into the hinterland. It did this with Sonata, its value brand. Backed by cricketer M.S. Dhoni, the brand has waded into this market with Super Fibre watches in 68 varieties. Says Harish Bhat, COO, Watches, Titan: “We piloted watch sales in Tata Kissan Kendras owned by Tata Chemicals. Now, we want to expand our 2,500-store retail presence multi-fold.”

Challenge: Extending Titan and its allied brands into new categories and sub-segments Strategy: Focus on strength of the Titan brand and quality of new products Outcome: Strong growth of Titan Eye+ eyewear label, with two new stores opening every week

In jewellery, C.K. Venkatraman, COO, Tanishq, has had to battle constantly fluctuating gold prices as the brand sought to expand its business. Tanishq recently initiated a scheme to allow people to exchange their old gold jewellery of lower karatage (19.9K) for 22K gold. “This helped us tap non-Tanishq customers,” says Venkatraman.

“We also need to prove that it is worth paying more for our products,” says Bhat. So, at its Eye+ stores, Titan offers services such as personalised style consultancy and a style section where you can photograph yourself and compare your looks. “Our campaign ‘Who do you want to be today?’ was based on the insight that customers play different roles in their lives and would like to choose eyewear that suits those roles,” says Kant. Despite the slowdown both globally and in India, Titan is reluctant to cut down its marketing and advertising spend. “Cutting marketing spends is not a solution to such situations,” says Kant. “Sales are the ultimate goal of any business; so, marketing activities have to continue.”

—Rahul Sachitanand