Gold that didn't glitter immediately

Titan Industries was started in the year 1984. The company started manufacturing wrist watches in 1987 that turned out truly legendary. If you are a 80s kid, you must surely be remembering the advertisements of Titan watches. Manufacturing these watches in India required importing many of the components into the country. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Indian imports were tightly watched by the govt. No company had the liberty of plainly importing goods. They had the mandate of funding these imports by way of earning foreign exchange. Titan company came up with the idea of exporting gold ornaments from the country in order to compensate for the imports.

It was in the year 1996, a group of men at Tata Sons thought about the idea of selling these ornaments within the country as well. This led to the birth of 'Tanishq', the brand loved by millions of Indians. The rise of Tanishq has been full of ups and downs. In fact there were times that the very existence of brand Tanishq was doubted by a large group of top level executives at Tata Sons. Mr. Xerxes Desai was the founding force behind Titan company and its flagship brand Tanishq. The first store was opened in Chennai in the year 1996. Xerxes and team were enthusiastic and confident that the value proposition offered by Titan was unique and Indians are surely going to fall in love with the glitter.

Days started moving, then months. By now, team Xerxes had realised that selling the concept of Tanishq to Indian consumers was not going to be as easy. Tanishq had come out with an idea of selling 18 carat jewellery at a time when Indians were used to flaunting 22 carat ornaments. This drop in carat certainly meant that the jewellery started getting more affordable. However, there was something else Tanishq had done to attract their valuable consumers. The design of ornaments was made much more attractive than what was offered in the market by local jewellers. Such a change was much welcome by a certain section of the society, but a large part of Indian ladies chose to stay with their heavier 22 carat pieces of glitter.

1996 had now converted into year 2000, and Tanishq was still losing money. Many top executives at Tata Sons had been sceptical about this idea of selling gold ornaments. A consensus thought started taking shape that Titan should just continue playing their strength- watches. Pressure was mounting on the team to either get profitable, or come to terms with the reality. Amidst such high pressure, many thought experiments were done to understand the Indian consumer better. One such experiment was to place a 'karatmeter' in the Tanishq stores. This is a device that uses spectroscopy and tells you about the purity of your ornaments when placed under the radar. There were no charges for using the karatmeter and customers were encouraged to come to Tanishq stores just for checking the purity of their existing jewellery. Gradually, large crowds started gathering outside their stores to get a reality check about their much loved pieces of jewellery. Many women found out that their existing jeweller had cheated them. It was not easy for them to hold back the tears. The emotional breakdown started happening within the store itself.

This is exactly when Titan made its bold move. They announced an exchange offer where customers could exchange their old ornaments for more trendy Tanishq ornaments. Getting cheated is no easy feeling, and Titan started winning over these consumers backed by the 'Tata' trust. Since then, many more changes have gone into making Tanishq stores what they are today. All that glitters is not gold, and sometimes even real gold takes much longer to prove its mettle!

Story inspired from the book 'Great Indian Business Stories'