How a Chennai journalist’s book inspired ‘Made in India: A Titan Story’

This web-series has a Chennai connection; it is based on city journalist Vinay Kamath’s book ‘Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand’. A former The Hindu Business Line journalist, Vinay is pleased with the positive response to the series that has brought to screen the events he chronicled over years of reporting. “I am overwhelmed with the outpouring of emotions for it,” he says, “It has been quite a revelation. The story of innovation and surpassing odds, the period setting, interspersed with old Hindi songs has gone down well with viewers.”

Vinay’s book, released in December 2018, was the result of three years of work as bulk of the interviewing and writing happened alongside his regular work as a journalist with The Hindu BusinessLine. “Titan is a well-researched company and several B-school case studies have documented it. But my book is pieced together based on conversations with the people who built Titan. As it was all original material, it took time,” he recalls.

Naseeruddin Shah and Jim Sarbh in a still from the series
| Photo Credit:
Amazon MX Player

For the journalist, the most compelling narrative of the Titan story was how it was founded against all odds. “Neither of the co-founders, Xerxes Desai and Anil Manchanda, were engineers. Yet, both of them had the gumption to get into a high-precision engineering industry knowing they could hire the talent. There were many twists and turns in the founding of the company; a large business group like the Tatas could not enter watchmaking as it was reserved for the public sector and small scale sector because of the archaic MRTP Act restrictions. Titan’s founding was also helped by a TN cadre IAS officer, Iravatham Mahadevan, also a renowned epigraphist. So, several serendipitous events came together in Titan’s founding,” states Vinay, whose publishers were approached by producers Sunil Bohra and Prabhleen Sandhu for the series.

Vinay himself recalls the hype when the watches were first launched in India. “In 1989, I met Xerxes Desai for the first time, introduced by the then Chairman AL Mudaliar, who was the TIDCO nominee as the company Chairman. Xerxes said if I were to write on the company, I should visit the factory in Hosur, which I did.” Vinay followed Titan’s progress through the years, so he was ideally placed to chronicle its journey. “And… it was not all success. While the watches succeeded in India, its launch in Europe bombed badly.”

There are several inspiring sequences in the series that audiences are relating to and Vinay, as a viewer himself, feels the scenes have brought those moments alive in ways only the visual medium can. “For instance, JRD Tata’s reaction when he is rebuffed by the Swiss watchmaker saying Indians can’t handle the high technology of watch making. Or when he declares to Xerxes Desai that he won’t wear a watch till the Tatas make one. And how JRD takes the whole team to a concert, when they hit upon Mozart’s 25th symphony as the Titan tune that is today instantly recognisable to audiences.”

Based on real events, Made In India: A Titan Story might pave the way for more business and feel-good stories finding their way to streaming platforms. “It is quite different from what is usually on offer on OTT platforms. It is this uniqueness that has made the series an audience favourite.” Perhaps that is why the series has resonated with people, proving that the making of a watch can be as gripping as the rise of a gangster in a crime drama.