Titan eyes lifestyle products

Titan Industries sets its horizon wide

Titan Industries, which is in the process of rechristening itself as Titan Company Ltd to reflect its morphing into a complete lifestyle company, has set itself a target to go after a wide range of products suited for the emerging lifestyle.

After entrenching its presence in watches and jewellery segments over the past 25 years, it's slowly finding its feet in the eyewear segment. The publicly-held company is enabling itself to look at a slew of products ranging from sarees to writing instruments, mobile phones, musical instruments, educational accessories to kitchen equipment among others.

Bhaskar Bhat, MD, Titan Industries, told Business Standard it was not necessary that they would enter all these segments, but they were enabling themselves to look at various categories. "We have created a 'New Business Division' under a dedicated CEO to look at various segments we can look at. The basic premise on how we enter a segment is based on a few critical aspects. The market should be large, it should be unorganised and how we can differentiate in that segment with our innovations and strong brand image," Bhat added.

Titan Industries has been relying on innovation to a large extent and has been actively funnelling in various innovations from across its workforce. It has set up an ‘Innovation School of Management’ (IScM) to address the objective of creating the ability to innovate and making it a culture among its employees. It co-created a customised learning course on innovation with an industry-leading consultant.

IScM offers a six-month course and students are given challenges to work on in an innovative manner. They are trained in various tools and techniques to develop innovative thinking capability, and the head of departments are trained as a mentor to use the innovation outcomes.

The school focuses not only on the results, but also on the process of making people think differently. After three days of classroom training, they are given four hours a week of free time to work on the project and mentored for two hours a week. As of now, the integrated supply chain management unit of Titan jewellery division has 185 trained innovators.

In addition to it, Titan Industries, which also has a growing presence in the precision engineering segment catering to the aerospace and mechanical engineering segment, is expanding the scope of this division by supplying equipment to sectors such as oil & gas exploration.

Titan Industries’ target

* Jewellery: All types of ornaments, jewels, diamonds, gold, silver, platinum, metal alloys, precious and semi-precious stones of all kinds.

* Logical expansion of its eyewear business: Contact lenses, hearing aids and related accessories

* Lifestyle platform:  Apparels, garments, sarees, bags, belts, caps, helmets, headwear, wallets, fragrances, perfumes, writing instruments, mobile phones and other personal convenience articles, devices and musical instruments, entertaining apparatus, sound equipment.

* Educational aid:  To design, develop and render content through educational workshops, conferences, theatre and entertainment shows gadgets, entertainment products,   food and beverages

* Tapping solar energy — solar panels, solar powered home lighting systems, batteries, fans, torches, solar lights, solar mobile,solar cookers, etc.