Passing the baton at Titan: United by values and legacy

DECEMBER 15, 11.25 A.M. We have just about finished setting up the training room of Titan Integrity (the headquarters of Titan Company) — the venue of our 11.30 a.m. interview with the then outgoing MD C.K. Venkataraman (fondly called CKV) and MD-designate Ajoy Chawla. CKV has already arrived. Immaculately dressed in a blue shirt and grey blazer, with blue spectacles (from Titan Eye Plus, no prizes for guessing that!) and a blue Titan Edge Squircle watch on his wrist, Venkataraman is stylishly colour-coordinated. Chawla walks in sharp at 11.30 a.m., not at all surprised to see CKV already there. “Venkat is almost parsimonious with time, unlike me who is often running late,” he laughs. On January 1, 2026, CKV passed on the baton of Titan Company to Chawla, and despite the tight schedules of handovers and farewells across the country a month earlier, the duo sat down with us to talk about the organisation, where both have come up the ranks. In fact, both of them are mirror image in terms of value, vision, and strategy. Their Titan grooming has taught them to be intrapreneurial and create an ecosystem where stakeholders are given precedence over shareholders. “Right from day one it has been like that. There is a belief that everyone has a right to play and if you acquire people with the right kind of capabilities, and give them freedom and encouragement that we will together create vision and strategy, the company will go far. That is still there 35 years later when I am about to leave the company,” says CKV. His mentors, Xerxes Desai (the first MD of Titan) and Bhaskar Bhat (former MD) taught CKV to roll up his sleeves and take risky bets, irrespective of whether he succeeded or failed. One of his earliest bets was in the jewellery division in 2005, which was then a fledgeling business. Despite being with Titan for 15 years, CKV was clueless about the category. So, he decided to take advantage of his own ignorance. “I questioned strategies,” says CKV. “In the South, there was a concept called wastage in jewellery, in addition to the making charges, which customers had to pay. Wastage plus making charges together was around 16% for most retailers. We didn’t charge wastage, but our making charge itself was 20%. My question was, why can’t we also have wastage, and the response was, we are a brand, how can we have a phrase like ‘wastage’. I decided to charge 8% wastage and 12% making charge and suddenly the 12% was just 4% more than competition. Our fortunes changed.” They sure did. When CKV handed over the jewellery division to Chawla in 2020, it was a robust ₹19,000 crore business. Chawla, on the other hand, prefers to call himself an innovator, something he could do because of the freedom he was given to express himself. “It has never been top down at Titan. It has always been the middle management coming up with an idea and incubating it,” says Chawla. He has been a part of the incubation process of several projects such as Fastrack, Helios, Skinn, and Taneira, which are sizeable brands today. “A lot of folks in the middle get a chance to express themselves, and in a way influence and lead the organisation as well as the board to see their point of view,” he adds. But then, it is the jewellery division of the ₹58,000-crore company which generates over 90% of the revenue. Doesn’t that make Titan Company more a business of scale? “Because of the huge power of the jewellery business, the financial resources available to the company came very handy in my efforts to sponsor and support new businesses as well as international step-outs,” CKV explains. Both of them claim to be strong believers in long-term value creation and not about chasing quarterly results. “Be it the launch of Irth, the scaling of the international business or refining the course of the eyecare division to chase premiumisation, it has been possible because of the financial situation of the company as well as the board aligning with all of us on long-term value creation rather than just quarterly results,” says CKV. Chawla’s agenda in the next few years is set to be growth, fuelled by innovation. He says CKV has been brilliant at creating scale, while his own style is about innovating and incubating newer ideas. “We have strengthened ourselves in categories where a woman expresses herself. Beyond jewellery and watches, there are a lot more — saris, perfumes, and accessories. There is an opportunity to bring out the lifestyle element even more as newer categories begin to mature.” THE INWARD APPROACH: Chawla claims he and CKV have seldom disagreed. “At a value level there is a lot of alignment, we think alike on a lot of issues.” The similarities extend even to their personal interests. Both are avid runners and seldom miss an opportunity to sing Kishore Kumar songs. Is this similarity because they have been groomed in the same organisation for over 30 years? In fact, Titan Company has always groomed its leaders internally, and has never hired from the industry. Is that a conscious strategy? Yes, says CKV. “The culture of an organisation is its lasting strength, and it helps if leaders are groomed within because culture is not created instantly; it takes years.” “Understanding the culture is key, and so is the depth of understanding the categories in which we operate,” he adds. “We are a lifestyle company. I spent 15 years in watches, 15 years in jewellery, so I have a grip on the lifestyle business. Ajoy has been in every part of the company, from eyecare to Taneira and now jewellery. He comes from a reasonable-to-very-high depth of each category, as opposed to somebody from another lifestyle company.” Though the duo are similar in terms of their values, their personalities are chalk and cheese. “Venkat is very focussed and sharp, while I am more free-flowing. I will be running late, he will be ahead of time. I may end up spending more time in office and reach home late; he gets home early and next morning at 5 a.m., his emails would start, and I would still be waking to what this world is all about,” says Chawla. CKV claims Chawla is much more innovative and people-focussed than him. “Ajoy is extremely spiritual and I am rational.” He believes it is important their values are similar and not their leadership styles. “If the style is similar it will be boring.” THE BUSINESS: CKV took over as MD of Titan Company from Bhaskar Bhat in October 2019. Since then, he has grown the business from ₹20,000 crore to ₹58,000 crore. In the past three years, the company has seen over 25% net revenue CAGR and 16% PAT CAGR, on the back of its premiumisation strategy. When asked about what has been the most satisfying in the past few years, CKV talks about the international growth of Tanishq and the premiumisation of the watch business. The company’s earlier overseas forays failed to hit the mark and it had to shut operations. “We were pre-occupied with domestic and didn’t have leaders of a certain stature who thought and breathed international all the time.” Spinning the international business into a separate unit was the game changer, CKV adds. Tanishq has stores across the U.A.E., Singapore and the U.S. It has also acquired a 67% stake in the U.A.E.-based jewellery brand Damas, with the intent of strengthening its position in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain. The watch business, on the other hand, has grown 17.2% year-on-year (₹4,576 crore) and registered a 39.3% EBIT growth, on the back of its premiumisation strategy. Recently, the company launched its most expensive watch ever, the ₹40.5 lakh ultra-luxury Nebula Jalsa, and the intent is to further premiumise. THE GAME PLAN: Chawla is excited about the Damas acquisition. “With Damas, the Arab segment opens up and if we are successful, it opens a playbook that is beyond the Indian diaspora. There are many more leaps of faith which we can take out there,” he says. Though strengthening Titan’s global presence is definitely on the cards, Chawla doesn’t intend to do anything drastic. The company recently announced the launch of its first lab-grown diamond jewellery brand, beYon. “We are in a good place. There is no need to try and do things for the sake of it. I am lucky to be inheriting a company and a portfolio of businesses that have a lot of potential energy. Generating kinetic energy or sustaining that will continue to be a goal, but how we keep enhancing the potential energy of existing businesses is more important.” So, in the long run, will the intent be to reduce dependence on the jewellery division? Not really. “The contribution of jewellery may actually go up with the Damas acquisition. But that doesn’t take anything away from existing businesses. For instance, watches in the premium segment has got a huge headroom,” explains Chawla. Post-retirement, CKV plans to do things he never had the time to do earlier. He loves to cook. Each time he travels to the hinterlands or even to the metros, he tries to learn a new recipe. He says the best poha he has ever had is at the Titan guest house in Mumbai. The plan now is to travel the world and learn recipes. “I want to learn to make an authentic Italian pizza or a pasta. My wife is Telugu and I have never had time to learn that language. That’s on my bucket list, too.” Chawla’s one-line agenda — growth fuelled by innovation. It will be interesting to see how he steers the Titan ship, starting January 2026.

Passing the baton at Titan: United by values and legacy

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