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Titan Company may take up to two years to recover the revenue loss following the exit of its flagship brand ‘Titan’ from the low-cost watches segment.
Watch revenues declined by 13 per cent in March quarter to ₹444 crore from ₹511 crore in the corresponding quarter last fiscal. Profit (before finance cost and tax) came down to ₹4.5 crore in Q4 FY-16 from ₹49 crore in the year-ago period.
In a portfolio rejig, the Tata group outfit last year re-positioned Titan watches at above ₹2,000 price-bracket, leaving the ground open for their “mass-brand” Sonata to take care of the volume segment.
“It (the watches business) is going through a correction phase and in the last quarter, we did have a decline (in revenue). We will be correcting it (revenue) over the (next) two years,” Bhaskar Bhat, Managing Director, Titan, told BusinessLine in an interview.
“One of the reasons (for decline in revenue) was the company vacating at a certain price point, and therefore, we ended up losing sale at that end of the business,” he added.
Sales of the Sonata brand were “not to that extent” to fill the void left by Titan’s exit. Sonata will continue to be a mass market brand and will look to move up the price points and the challenge was to attract the ‘Titan’ customer to the sub-2k segment. This will take some time, Bhat maintained.
New smart-watchesThe company, meanwhile, is planning to launch two to three models of smart-watches, under the “Juxt” brand.
“We have some more models coming up (in Juxt). You will see them in the next few months. We have endowed them with more functionality as well as design,” he said.
Targeting young working professionals, Titan had launched one model of the smart-watch in June last year. The premium analogue smart-watch is currently available in three variants priced in the range of ₹15,995-20,000.
Pointing out that ‘aesthetics’ form the main stay for the Juxt models, Bhat said the company was open to experimenting with analogue and digital varieties.
“We are not married to analogue watches. We are married to aesthetics.”
Bhat, however, did not reveal the price points maintaining that they were still in the works.
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