By Satya Narayan Misra in Bhubaneswar, June 20, 2026: Based on Vinay Kamath’s book “Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand” (2021), director Robbie Grewal’s has conjured an illuminating period drama, streaming in Amazon MX Player, ‘Made in India –A Titan Story’. It disregards the traps of algorithmic storytelling and builds a narrative that is rooted in wonder and joy, skirting clichés in the process andmorphs a potential dry documentary in to a warm love story between men, women and machine.

Titan is a true Made in India story of India’s first quartz watch Titan by the Tatas, led by its legendary leader JRD, to take on the might of HMT and the avalanche of imported European watches that were sold in the black market. It also took away the ingrained habit of winding a knob to run a watch. It’s a fascinating story of individual passion, built on the foundation of solid team work, backed by the most powerful business house, the Tatas in pre liberalised India, where license, permit and quota and the ruling elite with their wily babus ruled the roost.

The Story of Titan

One of Nehru’s temples of independent India HMT was founded in 1953 in Bangalore, and diversified into watch making in 1961 through collaboration with Citizen of Japan. The Janata watch became its visible mascot, while a thriving black market of Swiss watches had a field day. The story of Titan opens with energy; mirroring Xerxes Desai’s flamboyant and deeply people centric style. Under JRD’s bold vision and Xerxes’s spirited leadership, they set out to build a world class Indian watch, capable of taking on the dominant European giants.

Xerxes had a solid team consisting of Akash, his sounding board, IIT topper Gaurav and doe eyed, determined Megha Mhatre, each committed to the goal of creating a wearable world class affordable device that would change the way the Indians clocked time. Titan faced enormous hurdles that ranged from antiquated government rules (MRTP Act), unwillingness of banks to lend loans, to poor sales as the market did not want to look beyond the government patronised HMT.

The High Points

Faced with these unsurmountable hurdles with a Tata Board unwilling to risk such an uncertain and humungous investment proposal, Xerxes dabbled with innovative designs and sent designers to Europe in order to ensure that Titans are world class. Xerex and his team’s determination to turn humiliation in to history by building a world class watch in India is what makes the show so special; its soul underneath the muscular team that provides the spine.

Titan is a tale of innovation and fortitude of thinking outside the box and the courage to acknowledge failure. One of the refreshing moments in the Titan story is when Xerxes urges his team to celebrate failure. As if this was not enough, JRD exhorts the team ‘to fail again, but fail better’. These iconic lines linger long after, reflecting the kind of mature resilient leadership required to build a brand’s legacy. The other high points of Titan Story are innovative ideas like Uniform Consumer Price to pre-empt asymmetry of price between the South & the North.The way the name Titan was conceived and the Mozart track the team stumbles upon to create the iconic Titan theme music are breath taking.

The Performances

Jim Sarbh as Xerxes delivers yet another magnificent performance, after his essaying Homi Bhabha in Rocket Boys; charismatic, sharp, and vulnerable. His elfin Parsi charm, making delectable akuri breakfast reminds of Nasir playing the role of a Parsee in the film Pestonjee. Veteran Nasiruddin as JRD is magisterial – restrained, dignified and carrying the quiet weight of a nation’s aspiration. Under the discerning eye of Nasir, Jim Sharbh demonstrates how to perform in tandem, without being overwhelmed; reminding one of the resplendent acting in tandem of thespian Dilip Kumar with the angry Young siren of the 80s, Amitabh in the film Shakti.

Vaibhav as Akash, brings solid dependable energy as Desai’s ally. Saran & Kaveri add intense, layered performance. They are exceptionally grounded as the slow burning couple in the team. Kaveri’s journey in the corporate world particularly resonates as she is battling with society’s pressure to marry and ‘settle down’, while she is trying to shine in a man’s corporate world. Namita Dubey’s chemistry with Sarbh is natural and warm and shows how marriage can be one of equals. The serial uses smartly golden era Hindi film songs like Ajeeb DastanYeh, Sar Jo Tera Chakraye, Ek Din Bik Jayega, Thandi Hawa Kali Ghata, Hai Apna Dil to Awara to stir different types of emotion and pull us in to nostalgia.

Lessons

The Titan story is not merely a story of how quartz analog electric watches were manufactured in Hosur in 1980s and eventually marketed successfully in India and abroad despite the asphyxiatic control regime under Indira. It was built by ordinary heroes like Megha, Gaurav &Akash under the tutelage of a maverick Xerex and charismatic leadership of JRD Tata. JRD, though an admirer of Nehru, strongly believed that socialism was not the right economic ideology to pursue in India.

For him, for India to produce world class products in India, we need to embrace the best global practices and be market friendly and innovative. To quote JRD: ‘Ache Din Chalte Nahinhain, lanapadtahai’. (Good times do not come walking, they have to be grabbed).

In the hype surrounding Make in India, these prophetic words of JRD could not have been timelier. The Titan story is inspiring as it provides valuable lessons in team work, vision, value addition, technology, value and risk taking. It takes us back to a time when a simple wrist watch carried with it dreams of pride, precision and possibility. And how to be in tune with the times.

*Satya Misra is a film aficionado