Titan’s dazzling leap: CaratLane eyes new horizons

According to C.K. Venkataraman, managing director, Titan, the company seeks to cater to rising demand from the large Indian diaspora overseas, and Tanishq could end FY25 with 40 overseas stores.

“We have a target for it (international business) for the near term, but I’m not yet ready to share it in public. But by March 2025, we hope to have 40 Tanishq stores outside India. Considering that we had zero stores outside India till September of 2020, we are really climbing, it’s a scorching pace of growth (in international markets),” Venkataraman said in an interview on Wednesday.

Tanishq inaugurated its first international store in Dubai’s Meena Bazaar in October 2020 amid the pandemic, but it did exceedingly well, according to the company’s FY21 annual report. 

Presently, Tanishq has established its presence in North America, GCC and Singapore. In the December 2023 quarter, the brand further expanded its international footprint by adding two new stores in the US, located in Houston and Dallas, along with one more store in Singapore. 

The company’s lightweight jewellery brand, Mia, was also introduced in Dubai, expanding Titan’s international jewellery store footprint to 14 outlets, which also includes the Zoya jewellery brand.

“We are currently focusing on the Indian diaspora, which is substantially present in the Gulf cooperation council (GCC) countries—UAE, Oman, Qatar, Saudi, etc., apart from Singapore, the US, a few cities in Canada and a few cities in the UK and perhaps in Australia,” Venkataraman added.  

“Currently, our focus is GCC and North America, at least for FY25. We will look at the other countries after that, but within these, the ambition is very large, the expansion is quite aggressive.”

Titan ended FY23 with standalone revenues of ₹38,569 crore. The retailer ended FY23 with 2,710 stores across 400-plus cities in India. Titan offers a diverse range of brands spanning watches, jewellery, and other lifestyle categories including perfumes, ethnic wear, eyewear, and bags. Its jewellery division comprises brands like Tanishq, CaratLane, Zoya and Mia.

“Zoya is already present as a gallery in some of the Tanishq stores outside India. We also opened one Mia store in Dubai six months back, and we have a big ambition for CaratLane in the US. We are working on it,” he said. CaratLane is the company’s primary diamond brand that it acquired last year.

Tanishq had first launched in the US in 2007 with one store each in New Jersey and Illinois. The strategy back then was to cater to American customers. “We exited around 2008-09. Now, our strategy revolves around the Indian diaspora.”

Venkataraman said the overall demand for gold also remains “positive,” despite the World Gold Council forecasting “subdued” demand for gold jewellery in India over the next couple of months. “We are quite positive about the gold market. The network expansion continues to be aggressive at a brisk pace in virtually all the businesses.”

In February, in its update on the Indian market, the council had said: “A pickup in demand in the near term could be gradual and limited in the absence of a significant drop in price levels.” 

In the December quarter, Titan’s jewellery division delivered over 20% year-on-year revenue growth despite muted demand in other consumption categories. Venkataraman said the company’s core consumers—more upwardly mobile shoppers—remain unaffected by broader macroeconomic concerns. 

“The income classes from which Titan derives maybe 80-90% of its business are the top income classes of the pyramid. If you take inflation, job losses as well as job creation challenges, as factors which inhibit demand, the top income segments are relatively less affected,” he added.

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Published: 20 Mar 2024, 07:44 PM IST