India's watch story: From time told to time made

In the half-lit workshop of a Swiss watchmaker, a balance wheel trembles like a heartbeat, each oscillation marking a fraction of a second in perfect harmony. In Japan, a Seiko engineer measures tolerances in microns, shaping gears finer than a grain of rice. That precision combining artistry and engineering is at the core of every watch—a complex mechanism that crystallises stored energy from a wound spring or battery into the tick and the tock of time. That is called movement in watches.

Seiko and Swiss luxury watchmakers like Patek Philippe, Rolex, Audemars Piguet and Jaeger LeCouture are all known for their inhouse watch movements—the hallmark of great horology.

Other watchmakers of the world mostly use Swiss or Japanese movements, with some going for German or Chinese options.

And India? The country used to manufacture movements during HMT’s heyday, but even those were technically Japanese in origin. These days, barring isolated efforts, India has found it difficult to create new home-grown movements. In an exception, last year, Titan unveiled a watch with an in-house calibre designed and assembled in India.

Having a single homegrown movement shouldn’t be the reality in a nation with more wrists than any other in the world, and which ranks among the top three watch markets.

India can send a spacecraft to Mars, forge aircraft carriers and build surgical robots for global hospitals. Why then is it in an almost absurd situation where the majority of its watches, be it from market leader Titan or from the many micro brands, while telling Indian stories, have movements engineered by the Swiss, Japanese, or the Chinese?

THE JANATA YEARS
India’s tryst with watchmaking came in 1961, when Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) set up its watch division in Bengaluru with technical support from Japan’s Citizen. For a young nation that was still learning to stand on its industrial feet, the arrival of mechanical wristwatches stamped “Made in India” was a symbol of modernity.

HMT went on to produce millions of watches through the 1960s to the ’80s. From the modest Janata, famously worn by former prime minister Indira Gandhi, to dress watches that became wedding gifts and retirement tokens, HMT democratised timekeeping.

Production halls in Bengaluru and nearby Tumkur trained a generation of technicians in assembling and regulating mechanical calibres. Yet beneath the pride was a crucial reality: the movements inside were not Indian inventions, but Citizen calibres produced under licence.

“HMT began life by manufacturing Citizen/ Miyota movements under licence,” recalls Pune-based watchmaker Aditya Sambhare, who has serviced and repaired many HMTs from different periods of production. “Over the years, I saw a steady decline in quality and deletion of features in the name of ‘value engineering’. Leave alone designing their own movement, HMT didn’t even attempt to improve the performance of or add features to the Citizen ones they produced.”

The problem was never about talent or technology, but economics. “India has been manufacturing licensed movements on and off since the early ’60s — HMT using Citizen, Hegde & Golay using Swiss, Allwyn using Seiko,” says Dinesh Sachdev, cofounder of Madras Watch Company. “Titan has shown that India has the engineering and infrastructure to make proprietary movements. The only limitation is competition. With Swiss and Japanese giants at every price point, and Chinese calibres at half the cost, it didn’t make sense to pour money into proprietary movements,” he adds. For decades, Indian buyers wanted accessible, reliable watches—not painstakingly built calibres. The market never asked, so the industry never delivered.

Anita Khatri, CEO of Mumbai-based luxury consulting firm AKLC, frames it as a matter of priorities: “Switzerland built its watchmaking industry on centuries of craftsmanship and luxury positioning. India’s watchmaking journey, by contrast, was about accessibility. HMT and later Titan focused on putting affordable watches on as many wrists as possible.”

Luxury strategist Abhay Gupta calls it India’s great horological paradox: “Our watchmaking story has been rooted in aesthetics and storytelling, not mechanical self-reliance. While design thrived, movement-making demanded long-term R&D, precision tooling and scale. There was simply no demand to justify it.”

By the late 1980s, HMT was already faltering. The global quartz revolution led by Seiko, the flood of cheap imports from Japan, Hong Kong and later China, and the company’s bureaucratic inertia silenced it.

There were other structural gaps too. India’s micro-precision manufacturing base was still focused on defence and heavy engineering. The delicate skills needed to make hairsprings, jewels, or escapements never took root beyond HMT’s factory walls. The few mechanical engineers trained in fine tolerances—acceptable level of seconds a watch may loss or gain per day—found more lucrative opportunities in the automotive or aerospace industries. What remained was nostalgia.

ROMANCING THE MOVEMENT
But why is making a movement considered the holy grail of horology? Because it demands precision and patience few industries can match. It is micro-engineering at its most unforgiving: hairsprings thinner than a human hair, jewels that cut down friction, wheels that mesh without a whisper of error.

“Manufacturing movements is technically and economically demanding because many different skills are required,” says English watchmaker and historian Rebecca Struthers. To do it in an economically viable way, you need an entire ecosystem.

“Switzerland has perfected this, with specialists in hairsprings, mainsprings, jewels, escapements, dials and cases all working in proximity. Even the finishing of parts or timing of hairsprings is a specialist job. That takes a lot of time and capital to establish successfully.”

For India, this was the missing link after HMT. While engineering talent was abundant, infrastructure and sustained investment weren’t. “Mechanical timepieces are no longer essential products— they belong to a niche of enthusiasts,” says Sambhare. “Making a movement from scratch involves very high costs, which only work if you sell very few at very high prices, or very many at very low prices. Neither fits the Indian market.”

For centuries, the ability to craft a movement is seen as the ultimate badge of mastery. A case may shine, a dial may dazzle, but respect in horology comes only when a country, or a brand, can make its own heartbeat.


THE TITAN SHIFT
For much of its history, Titan was pragmatic. Entering the market in the 1980s, it focused on quartz movements, drawing technical knowledge from France Ebauches, a French manufacturer of watch movements, and building hundreds of variants in-house led by their innovation. Titan scaled, dominated and became one of the world’s largest watch companies. Its early experiment was Edge in 2002 — at the time the world’s slimmest quartz watch, engineered entirely in-house. Creating a case barely 3.5 mm thick drove Titan to reimagine how movements could be miniaturised.

“Our initial years were focused on quartz, which was loved by diverse audience across the country. We transitioned into mechanical when the time was right. In 2011, we decided we wanted to manufacture our own mechanical movement,” says Revathi Kant, chief design officer and executive vice-president, Titan Company Limited. “Until then, we procured from Europe or China. But we didn’t want to just clone an ETA (Swiss movement manufacturer) calibre like the rest of the world. We wanted to build our own platform.”

That ambition crystallised in late 2024 with the launch of the 7TH1 Flying Tourbillon under the JALSA collection. Designed and assembled in India, it took Titan engineers almost two and a half years to bring it to life.

Choosing a tourbillon was deliberate. Invented by Abraham-Louis Breguet in 1801, it houses the escapement, balance wheel and spring in a rotating cage to counteract gravity’s effect on accuracy. In modern watches, it serves as a showpiece of skill. Even Rolex has famously refused to make one, valuing durability over complexity.

“Designing a movement is not easy. It runs into years of precision mechanism-building and reliability testing before you can even bring it to market,” says Kant.

The question is why now. After decades of importing movements, what has shifted? Kant frames it as both ambition and opportunity: “Over the past 40 years, we have marked many milestones in our design and engineering journey. We have operated with the aspiration that India can stand shoulder to shoulder with global horology. Consumers are also ready—they want not just affordable watches, but watches with a story and substance behind them.”

Gupta interprets it as Titan catching a second wind: “With JALSA, Titan has shown substance can catch up with story. It proves India can craft a watch that is both culturally evocative and mechanically formidable.”


MISSING BEAT
Titan may have taken the bold step of crafting India’s first flying tourbillon, but for the rest of the industry, the barriers remain formidable. Making a movement is not just about ambition; it requires an entire ecosystem of skills, suppliers and demand that India has never fully developed.

“There is virtually no physical training infrastructure in India that I know of. The only options are an apprenticeship with a watchmaker, online courses, or self-education,” says Sambhare. “Even spares and tools mostly have to be imported, adding to cost and delay.”

Independent brands have learned to adapt. At Jaipur Watch Company, founder Gaurav Mehta relies on Japanese and Swiss calibres while creating dials that embed antique coins and hand engravings. “Our strength lies in creating watches that carry an Indian soul,” he says, “But to build an indigenous movement, you need decades of investment and an ecosystem of suppliers. Right now, that doesn’t exist here. A captive market is also limited for Indian movements.”

That sentiment is echoed in Bengaluru, where Nirupesh Joshi, cofounder of Bangalore Watch Company, has built collections around cricket, aviation and space exploration. He is clear-eyed about the structural gap: “For us, credibility begins with design and consumer connect. Movementmaking is about precision engineering, specialised training and a scale of investment that few in India are prepared to take on.”

Yet, he says, the opportunity is real: “Many of our buyers are global Indians, but we are also seeing growing interest from watch enthusiasts who are discovering the brand for its stories and high-quality execution.”

Madras Watch Company has taken a different path. Its first watch, the MWC Naazhi, is a 100% made-in-India piece with even its calibre, salvaged from HMT auctions, upgraded with modern lubricants and adjusted for accuracy.

Gupta says: “An in-house movement is the soul of horology—it signals mastery, not mere assembly. For Indian brands to be taken seriously on the global luxury stage, owning their calibre is not just desirable, it is inevitable.” On paper, the ambition fits into the government’s Make in India narrative.

Global parallels show that catching up is possible. In Germany, Nomos Glashütte was founded in 1990 after reunification and, within two decades, built respected in-house calibres. In China, Seagull has grown into the world’s largest mechanical movement manufacturer, supplying globally. Both were backed by long-term state or regional support.

India’s time is now.