‘It’s about time’: How a Chennai journalist’s book inspired ‘Made in India: A Titan Story’
This is an idea whose time has come. And interestingly, the idea is about time itself. Three weeks into its streaming, Made in India: A
This is an idea whose time has come. And interestingly, the idea is about time itself. Three weeks into its streaming, Made in India: A Titan Storyon Amazon MX Player is already 2026’s most-viewed Indian web-series — according to the latest Ormax report. Chronicling the journey of Titan founder Xerxes Desai and his mentor, JRD Tata, the biographical drama transports viewers to the early 70s and 80s Bombay where the foundation of India’s iconic watch brand was laid. Directed by Robbie Grewal and starring Jim Sarbh and Naseeruddin Shah, the series has been hailed as a tale of ambition and nation-building. 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. 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 of Almighty Pictures 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.
The BriefWire