Fastrack set to jump into smart eyewear market with audio sunglasses

The eyewear will have inbuilt Bluetooth speakers through which a user would be able to manage calls and music on the go. Called Fastrack Vibe, the product will be available in two variants.

Three years after foraying into the smart wearables segment with Fastrack Reflex, Titan’s subsidiary Fastrack is set to enter the smart eyewear market. According to sources, the Bengaluru-headquartered company is going to launch smart audio sunglasses by the end of next month.

These eyewear will have inbuilt Bluetooth speakers through which a user would be able to manage calls and music on the go. Called Fastrack Vibe, the product will be available in two variants.

An email sent to Titan remained unanswered. “There are several smart eyewear players in the market but the USP of this product will be its affordable price point which is between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000,” said the source.

The Bose Frames audio sunglasses which were launched in India in June last year carry a price tag of Rs 21,900.

According to experts, Titan has done well in smart wearables positioning itself as one of the top players in the segment. Its brands have high recall especially Fastrack which is India’s largest youth brand.

The jewellery-to-watches maker has two in-house sunglasses brands — Titan glares and Fastrack sunglasses. “This new category will help customers to listen to music, connect calls and navigate. However, this being a new segment, a lot of ad-spend would be required to create the category,” said Abneesh Roy, research analyst at Edelweiss Securities.

Last year in October, Titan had brought Skyfly Mutrics Smart eye wear to India which had features such as Qualcomm Bluetooth 5.0 and an eight hour playtime. It also has an in-built mic to enables users to access Siri and Google Assistant and answer calls on the go. However, with the Fastrack offering, the Bengaluru-headquartered company will be rolling out an in-house built smart eyewear, for the first time in the market.

Launched in 1998, Fastrack retails across the nation through 180 exclusive stores in over 80 cities as well as authorised multi-brand outlets and online portals.

The company has four variants of smart wearables under the Fastrack brand, namely Reflex, Reflex 2.0, Reflex Wav and Beat. It came up with the first gesture controlled band in the world with Fastrack Reflex Wav.

According to the International Data Corporation, India is the third largest market for smart wearables after the US and China. Hence, Titan has been focusing on the smart wearables category over the last few years and has come up with 13 smart products so far. It recently acquired patented technology in gesture control from Hyderabad-based start-up HUG Innovations and has also hired its entire 23-member team to build in-house technology for their wearables.

Titan’s watches and wearables growth for December quarter was flat compared to previous year as market for watches itself is estimated to have declined by around 4 per cent due to poor customer sentiment which led to primary sales to trade and ecommerce channels declining sharply. “However, our own retail stores (World of Titan, Fastrack and Helios) grew quite well despite the weakness in the market,” said the company.