List of retail companies in india ---------------------------------Cafe Coffee Day Barista Pantaloon Group Provogue Trent (Westside) ShoppersStop Murjani

Group Escada Group Arvind Brands Life Style Group McDonalds Titan Tanishq

Aditya Birla Retail Limited Arvind Brands Ltd. Avenue Supermarts Pvt. Ltd. (D-Mart) Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd. Classic Fashions Damas Goldfields Jewellery Pvt. Ltd. Ebony Retail Holdings Ltd. G R Thanga Maligai Gini; Jony Globus Stores Guardian Lifecare Ltd. Heritage Foods (India) Ltd. Infiniti Retail Ltd. ITC Ltd LRBD Kalanjali Arts & Crafts Kewal Kiran Clothing Pvt. Ltd.

Kirtilal Kalidas & Co. Koutons Retail India Ltd. Lakewood Malls Pvt. Ltd. (Haiko) Levi Strauss (India) Pvt. Ltd. Lifestyle International Pvt. Ltd. L N B Textiles Pvt. Ltd. Madura Garments Major Brands (India) Pvt. Ltd. Manipal Cure & Care Pvt. Ltd. McDonald's India (West & South) MnM Marketing Private Ltd. (MnM) Nallis NEXT Retail India Ltd. Odyssey India Ltd. Oswal Retail Pvt. Ltd. Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd. Personality Ltd. (Weekender) Piramyd Retail Ltd. Planet M Provogue India Ltd. Rajmal Lakhichand Jewellers Pvt. Ltd. Raymond Ltd. Reliance Petro Marketing Pvt. Ltd. Reliance Webstore Ltd. RPG Retail Sankalp Retail Value Stores Pvt. Ltd. (mydollarstore) Shoppers Stop Subiksha Trading Services Pvt. Ltd. TCS Textile Pvt. Ltd. (The Chennai Silks) The Bombay Dyeing & Manufacturing Co. Ltd Titan Industries Ltd. Trent Ltd. Unilever India Exports Ltd. Vishal Retail Ltd. Vivek Ltd.

Wadhawan Food Retail Pvt Ltd WITCO (India) Ltd. Zodiac Clothing Co. Ltd. Regards, rg

Titan watches : What is your style ?

Brand : Titan Company : TATA Agency: O&M Indian Watch industry is estimated to be around 1600 crores and Titan is riding on top of it with a market share of over 50%. This is a super brand that has changed the way we look at ( or wear) watches. A marketing success story, Titan is a brand that will be of interest to most of the marketers.

Titan , a brand from TATA was launched in 1987. During that time Indian watch market was dominated by HMT . At that time watches were seldom stylish and was catering to the basic need of knowing the time. Titan changed all that. With its stylish watches and smart advertising ,Titan took the market by storm. Titan infact changed the way watches was manufactured and marketed in India. HMT , a public sector company seldom bothered to respond. Titan initially pioneered the concept of " Gifting watches". The ads captured the essence

of gifting and a the market.

long with the trendy music, easily caught the imagination of

Customers who were fed up with ugly time machines welcomed the brand and Titan had a dream run for many years.

Titan faced lot of problems later when the competition began to eat up the lower end of the market. Besides that, there was another problem. The brand was lacking innovation. To be more precise, the customers were bored by [Link] was nothing new. Gifting proposition was no longer working . During this period, Titan made a big mistake. It wanted to play the volume game. For that Titan launched another brand Sonata. Sonata was a huge success because it was a cheap product but at the cost of the mother brand Titan. Titan was perceived to be a premium brand but with Sonata ( at that time " Sonata from Titan") endorsed by Titan took away the premium image from the mother brand. It was a big costly mistake. Titan realised this mistake and took away the Titan brand from Sonata. Now Sonata is endorsed by Tata not Titan. Titan realising that the market wanted something to be excited about watches began an extensive marketing campaign. Titan carefully segmented the market and developed different subbrands for each segment. Sub brands like Edge, Steel, Dash, Nebula , Classique, Royale, Fast Track , Raga, and the recently launched Wallstreet . By having various products / models and subbrands, Titan was able to create freshness about the brand. Titan also moved away from gifting . Titan was positioning itself as a fashion accessory

rather than a time keep

ing device.

Titan also found its persona in Aamir. Aamir provided the much needed edge to the brand. Titan was careful in keeping the brand above the celebrity.

The ads were fresh and neatly executed. Titan also was pushing another strategy . Watches was perceived as a one time buy and consumers seldom owned multiple watches. So Titan pushed the concept of " Matching Watches to Clothes" in the recent commercials. Since men are becoming more serious customers of fashion accessories, this is strategy that is worth trying out. For Titan, even if the concept fails, It has created the much needed freshness in the brand. Titan also made its presence in the ladies watch segment. It have a sub brand Raga

targeting the upwardly Mobile

e ladies in the premium segment.

Titan also relaunched the FastTrack brand of watched aiming the target segment of 1830 yrs old. Earlier Fasttrack was targeted at 20-25 year olds and positioned along the line " Cool watches from Titan". Then the company found out that the youth in the age group of 1120 years account for 42% of watch buying in India. Based on this insight the company relaunched the brand lowering the target segment to 18-30 year olds with the baseline " How many you have?". Again the strategy aimed at promoting the multiple watch owning concept. Fasttrack also launched a range of fashion accessories like Sunglasses trying to be a lifestyle brand.

Indian watch market is clearly segmented and lot of serious players are fighting out in these segments . The lower volume segment has HMT, Sonata , Maxima fighting it out. The mid segment has Titan, Timex etc and the premium segment has Titan ,Citizen etc. The super premium segment is also hotting up with lot of international brands setting shops in India.

Titan has carefully created a market for itself through careful segmentation and branding [Link] is a brand that showed the world that Indians are good in Branding.

Brand Update : Titan does an Eco-Drive with HTSE

HTSE stands for High Tech Self Energised .

Titan has been trying out various strategies to enter the lucrative luxury and premium segment in the Indian watch market. Titan was always associated with the premium segment targeting the middle and upper middle class of the social strata. The Luxury segment of the market is now occupied by the global iconic brands like Cartier, Rado, Omega etc. Titan tried to enter this market with the brand Xylys recently. HTSE is an attempt from the brand to tap the lucrative segment of upwardly mobile young Indian consumer. HTSE range of watches is characterized by its ability to energize itself using the light from the surroundings. That means the watch does not run on a battery. The brand is targeting the techie youth who would like to flaunt their gizmos ( source : afaqs). The brand is currently running a campaign featuring the brand ambassador - Aamir Khan Watch the ad here : Titan HTSE

The ads are undoubtedly well made and gives an ultra-cool image for the new range. Aamir Khan perfectly gels with the brand. Aamir and Titan can be termed as a classic example of a perfect celebrity-brand match.

The technology that drives HTSE is not something new. Citizen was a pioneer in bringing this technology to the watches through its Eco-Drive range of watches. EcoDrive saved the Citizen brand from near-death and gave the brand a tremendous boost in the Indian market. Eco-Drive was positioned as a sophisticated ultra-cool watch and the brand caught the attention of the young Indian consumers who wanted to flaunt their savvy personality. While Titan was perceived as a great brand, it was never considered techy or ultra-modern .Titan felt that such a serious persona will alienate the young consumers who look for exciting , modern brands.

According to Business Standard ( Link) Titan was working on technology to compete with [Link] that effort has been fulfilled in the launch of HTSE. HTSE thus fills in a big positioning gap in the brand. The brand now can boast of being as technically advanced as any other watch brand in the world.

One of the interesting factor that was noticed was the branding of this range. Titan chose to brand this range using an acronym HTSE. I am not really convinced about the effectiveness of this naming strategy. The brand could have chosen a proper name for the range rather than a dull acronym. It could have used HTSE as an ingredient brand and extended this ingredient brand to support all its other range of watches. So by using HTSE as a sub-brand, the company has limited the technology to a range of watches. So every watch that runs on this technology would come under HTSE range. If it had used HTSE as ingredient brand, that would have been a powerful differentiator and can be leveraged across the various sub-brands of Titan. Eco-Drive is used by Citizen as an ingredient brand and uses this technology to support all the range of watches.

However as a sub-brand, HTSE has the potential to further Titan's leadership position among the lifestyle segment. This technology will help Titan to reposition itself as a exciting brand rather than the current image of a serious brand.
SUSTAINABLE COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES TITAN believes that it is well positioned to meet the requirements of independent consumer electronics stores as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. The ability to offer wide variety of products that will be suffice to most of the electronics stores and thus be a one stop distributor. Very fast turnaround on deliveries and financial support. Big volume purchases gives leverage to TITAN to get competitive prices which are then passed to its customer leading to increased competitiveness and profitability. The respect it commands with many industry-leading principals. Staying closer to end markets. Being proactive and adapting swiftly to the market changes. Market and Customer driven. Customer Retention. People Driven and retaining the talent in TITAN. We appreciate the efforts of the TITAN team and believe in their personal growth. An experienced management team, most of whom have an average of more than 15 years of experience in the consumer electronics industry with transnational experience.