Titan scales up in-house movements with Vetra, targeting a 50% sales climb

When Indian consumers began gravitating back toward mechanical timepieces, watchmakers faced an old industry bottleneck: the movement ticking within.

While micro-brands rely heavily on catalog movements purchased from foreign manufacturers, Titan Company is pursuing another route. With rising domestic incomes fueling premium watch sales, the homegrown watch giant is bringing its movement-making capabilities front and center through its dedicated in-house automatic movement identity, Vetra.

The branding push comes alongside steep growth across the segment. India’s automatic watch market stands at roughly ₹3,000 crore out of a total watch market valued between ₹25,000-₹26,000 crore. Demand at higher price tiers is surging.

Nationally, watches priced above ₹25,000 are growing at 35%, while Titan’s portfolio in that category is climbing at 50%. Below the ₹25,000 threshold, industry growth sits near 15%, with Titan tracking between 20 and 22%. Even the luxury bracket, spanning watches above 1 lakh to 5 lakh rupees, is rising between 40 and 50% off a smaller base.

Titan's automatic sales climbed from roughly ₹275 crore last year to an expected ₹350 crore this year, compounding at an annual clip of nearly 50%.

Moving beyond catalog calibres

To meet this appetite, Titan needed to shed design constraints. "When you are building your watch around a catalogue movement from another movement manufacturer, you are limited by that design," explained Kuruvilla Markose, CEO of Titan Company's Watches and Wearables Division. "In our case, we have the capability and the freedom therefore to make our own movements the way we want. You can start with the design and work your way backwards."

The Vetra moniker combines the Sanskrit words Veda, meaning knowledge, and Tra, meaning instrument. Titan has built mechanical calibres since 2010, yet the brand felt the market had reached a turning point where movement transparency acts as a vital selling point. In-house calibres allow the company to innovate freely, from upgrading power reserves to designing slimmer watch profiles and complex complications.

The latest expressions under the Vetra line, priced between 48,000 and 54,000 rupees, introduce complications unseen in domestic movements. These include an upgraded 72-hour power reserve, jumping forward from Titan's previous 40-hour limit, which ensures a watch laid down on Friday evening runs smoothly into Monday morning. Another variant features an instantaneous jumping date mechanism, shifting immediately at midnight rather than rolling forward across hours.

While the company has notched domestic milestones with India's first tourbillon, wandering hour, meteorite watch, and 500-meter diver watch, a 72-hour power reserve remains below the 80 to 120 hours offered by legacy Swiss and Japanese calibres, such as the Powermatic 80 standard and five-day extended reserves..

"Taking a 72-hour to international markets may not be that relevant because there are many more higher capable movements out there, but for India it is certainly relevant," Markose said. He noted that the brand is preparing for a bigger leap on the global stage. "We are also working on a luxury brand which we announced last year at the GPHG [Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève], and at the next GPHG we hope to unveil it, and that brand we hope will have something that's a first in the world."

Markose views this transition as essential to avoiding reliance on foreign suppliers as demand scales across the nation of 1.4 billion people. "We have not yet reached the Everest summit, but at least we are now at the Everest base camp," Markose said, highlighting the company's broader purpose to establish India as a competitive force in modern horology.