Watch-maker Titan Industries has hiked retail prices by 5-7 per cent across its brands (Titan, Sonata and Fastrack) to tide over the double blow of rupee depreciation and rising input costs. The price of Titan Nebula gold watches alone has been hiked by 26 per cent.

This is the second time this year that Titan has hiked prices. (The company had raised prices by 4 per cent in April on rising input costs.)

“The price of gold has gone up by 35 per cent in the last one year. The cost of other materials such as palladium (which is used as an under coating) and cerium oxide (which goes into the glass on the watch) have also gone up substantially…while rupee depreciation has pushed up import costs by 15 per cent,” said Mr Harish Bhat, COO (Watches), Titan Industries.

The company sources about 30 per cent of its components from abroad — horological brass comes from Europe, batteries and movements from Japan and cases from China. Some components come from Hong Kong as well. The Xylys watches are entirely made in Switzerland. “We hope consumers will see the logic of the price hike as they are fully aware of the inflation in the country. We have hiked prices just to cover the increase in our costs,” said Mr Bhat.

Rupee depreciation and high input costs had impacted Titan Industries' margins in the second quarter.

The company hopes to stem costs by looking at manufacturing more at its own factories and stepping up sourcing from local vendors.

“We are also trimming non-essential costs such as airfreight charges by transporting via road. We have also set up wind-power at Theni (near Madurai) to supply energy to our plant in Tamil Nadu,” said Mr Bhat.

Titan's watch volumes last year was 13.5 million. This year, Titan hopes to sell 16 million watches.

Following the price hike, the Titan watch range would start at a price of Rs 275 (Sonata) and go all the way up to Rs 3.5 lakh (Nebula).

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