Chasing Lifestyle

Keeping with its tradition of creating a branded play out of highly unorganised businesses, Titan has ventured into saris. But can this, and some of its other smaller businesses, help it become a 52,000-crore company by 2023?

- Ajita Shashidhar

The tastefully done up villa in the up-market residential area of Indiranagar in Bengaluru, which houses The Titan Company’s newly launched sari brand, Taniera, is bound to excite sari connoisseurs. Apart from Kanjeevarams, Benarasis and Ikats, the 6,000 sq. ft-store also has Moirang Phi from Manipur, tie and dye Kotas from Rajasthan and mekhla chador from Assam. Bhaskar Bhat, MD, Titan, is hoping to make Taniera, an outcome of its internal accelerator programme in 2015, as successful as the jewellery business. “Tata played a big role in building Tanishq and will now play that role for Taniera as well. In two or three years, our goal would be to establish a footprint and make Taniera the most sought after and desirable Indian ethnic wear brand for the Indian woman.”

The unorganised nature of the business is what excites Bhat the most: “Just as the jewellery business lacked transparency when we entered the business, there is hardly any price transparency in silk saris too.” Bhat and his team are all set to convert a highly unorganised business into branded play.

The Big Question

Bhat has set an ambition of Titan becoming a 52,000 crore-revenue company by 2023 (current revenue is 15,656 crore) and reach 50 million consumers. He expects the jewellery business, which contributes 80 per cent to the overall revenue, to grow 2.5 times and reach five million consumers. In 2017/18, the company saw 20.75 per cent growth in revenue after years of low growth, and its net profit soared 70.86 per cent. The watch business, which had been posting low single-digit growth for a while, reported its highest ever profits in the last fiscal. Titan’s market cap grew from 41,082 crore in 2016/17 to 83,656 crore in 2017/18, making it the third most valuable Tata company after TCS and Tata Motors.