INSIDE TITAN'S QUEST FOR TREASURE BEYOND JEWELLERY

Titan wants to become a lifestyle company. But that needle isn’t moving fast enough

- Radhika P. Nair

Titan launched its accessories brand IRTH in 2022 and is expanding its presence.

(MINT)

“We have ended the year with a superlative quarter for top line growth, perhaps our best ever in the recent past.”

That comment, by Ajoy Chawla, Titan Company Ltd’s managing director (MD), during the company’s earnings call on 8 May, couldn’t have been more ironic.

Between 11 May, the first full day of trading after Titan's results were announced, and 15 May, the end of the week, Titan's stock tanked over 7%, wiping out more than ₹30,000 crore in investor wealth at one point.

What happened?

The company’s strong result—it generated revenue of ₹20,300 crore in the quarter ending March 2026, up 46% over the year-ago quarter—was quickly overshadowed by macro concerns around gold consumption and imports.

On 10 May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi publicly urged Indians to avoid buying gold for a year, and on 12 May, the government raised import tariffs on gold and silver.

These developments underline the contradiction at the heart of Titan’s growth story. No company has benefited more from India’s shift towards organised jewellery retail than Titan. In 1996, the year the company launched its first jewellery store on Cathedral Road in Chennai, its revenue was just above ₹350 crore. Its transformation into an $8-billion or ₹76,000 crore retail behemoth has been driven almost entirely by jewellery, which accounts for 90% of its revenue. And jewellery drove 94% of its incremental revenue growth in 2025-26.