Titan to delay entry into Chinese market

In the 1990s, the company had entered European markets and opened offices in London and Paris. Despite employing European designers and a London-based advertising agency the company’s move did not yield the desired results.

“This cautiousness is coming out of past experience. We believe that we have to test the market well before getting there to do a big launch,” Titan Industries CFO S Subramaniam told FE. “We have to wait and see. We don’t have a plan yet for the Chinese market. It has huge potential but is not very easy to get into,” he added.

Declining to give a timeline on its foray, Subramaniam said that the company’s policy has always been to take one country at a time and gradually increase market share in each of the countries it is present in. The organised Chinese watch market is pegged at around $2 billion, and is growing at a CAGR of 11% over the last five years. The overall market is segmented into two — the huge luxury segment dominated by Swiss brands and the other by unbranded local players.

“Unfortunately there is not too much of a mid-market segment in the branded

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