Water Baby

HYT Watches, the wonder brand that designs hydromechanical watches, has relaunched its Swissmade, luxury timepieces in India, targeting serious watch collectors and young, successful entrepreneurs

- Riddhi Doshi

In India’s cultural context, time is both, cyclical and fluid. Seven-year-old Swiss watch brand HYT lends materialistic representation to the concept by creating hydromechanical timepieces that, as the name suggests, use liquids to tell time. As the day progresses, green, blue or red liquid flows around its circular dials, and as evening sets in, the coloured liquid recedes hour by hour, presenting a new, fascinating way of seeing and telling time.

It’s an astonishingly pathbreaking technology, especially for the luxury watchmaking industry, which has considered water its mortal enemy for years. However, Swiss entrepreneur Patrick Berdoz along with three partners, including nuclear engineer Lucien Vouillamoz, made friends with liquid by developing an innovative fluid system, created with help from sister brand Preciflex that makes liquid indication devices for medical, design and automotive fields.

HYT in India

Since its launch in 2012, the brand’s watches, priced at `25 lakh and above, have been particularly popular with Asian watch collectors and young entrepreneurs. To strengthen HYT’s position in the continent, the company has dedicated this year to India, says CEO Grégory Dourde, while on his visit to Mumbai. He and his team were here to relaunch the brand and reorganise the brand’s distribution channel in the country. They have partnered with retailer Nitin Chainani’s Swiss Promotion Pvt Ltd as their seller in India.