Bangalore Watch Company plans to expand retail footprint

Premium watchmaker Bangalore Watch Company (BWC) plans to set up experience centres in Bengaluru and Mumbai within the next two financial years.

Established in 2018, the brand currently sells its products on its e-commerce platforms. While it has an experience centre in Bannerghatta, Bengaluru, the company says the planned new stores will play out BWC’s brand story to customers.

“Visiting a watch studio is a part of the whole luxurious experience of purchasing a premium wristwatch,” Nirupesh Joshi, the brand’s co-founder and creative director, told businessline.

Former tech consultants Nirupesh Joshi and Mercy Amalraj returned to the country after working abroad and founded BWC. The duo took to the luxury wristwatch segment and setup the Bangalore Watch Company which designs, engineers and assembles watches in the city.

“We spent a lot of time in the boutiques of top Swiss watchmakers such as Jaeger-LeCoultre, Patek Philippe, and Vacheron Constantin and realised that the craftsmanship of high-quality watches is similar to that of Indian jewelry. So after three years of active research, we founded BWC,” said Joshi.

The founders were also aware that the quality of watchmaking in Swiss brands and the storytelling that international brands do are uncommon in India.

“The grammar of design we wanted in luxury watches with sentimental values is stories from today’s India—not pre-colonial or colonial monuments, gods, or stereotypical patterns and colors. All that is irrelevant in the larger global conversation and narrative about India in the 21st century,” he said.

BWC has three lines of watches: MACH 1, inspired by Indian aviation; the Apogee line, inspired by the Indian space program; and Cover Drive, a line of watches inspired by Indian cricket.

“Some of our themes are representative of today’s India from a global narrative. We keep this in mind while building watches,” said the co-founder. “The aspiration is to put India on the world map. 10 years from now, we want to be one of the brands that changed India’s definition of brand building for the world.”

Notably, some of its limited-edition watches, produced in batches of 50–70, use material relevant to their backstories. The Admiral, a watch from the brand’s aviation line, contains a dial made of steel recovered from the INS Vikrant R11, an aircraft carrier of the Indian Navy.

The aircraft carrier was inducted into the Indian Navy in 1961 and scrapped in 2014.

The Apogee Manzinus from the brand’s space program collection has a 9-mm disc made from a 4.5 billion-year-old Muonionalusta meteorite recovered from the border of Finland and Sweden. The watch’s case is made of Cerasteel, a proprietary coating technology developed by BWC. The material is a stainless steel inner core with a ceramic outer and took 18 months to develop.

The watches are also fused with anti-scratch sapphire crystals. Once every four years, watch owners can visit trained watchmakers who ensure every moving pieces are lubricated and functioning.

“When we develop proprietary materials, color combinations, and technology, we have the technical merit to demonstrate new concepts, at least in India,” said Joshi.

The premium watch brand’s target customers include mid-level or senior-level executives, lawyers, doctors, frequent flyers, and watch enthusiasts who already own three or four Swiss watches.

“A lot of the Indian diaspora is enamored by stories of India’s excellence. Nostalgia works in our favor because, with the diaspora, there’s a lot of patriotism.”

The company ships its watches to customers in 30 countries across the globe.

The BWC has about 10 Swiss-trained watchmakers who assemble watches at their Indiranagar workshop. The company annually produces about 1000–1200 watches and on an average a watch costs ₹92,000. It operates at a 70 per cent gross margin and about 20 per cent net margins. Its entry level watch costs ₹83,000 and the range at present goes up to ₹1,20,000 per piece. Assembly of watches and tests take place in their Swiss-certified quality control labs.

The company works with supply chains that specialize in manufacturing components, including dials, hands, cases, and glasses. Some of these Indian companies even supply to Swiss watch companies.

“We’re probably their smallest customer. We design and engineer everything here. Although some components, such as movements and core mechanisms, come from Switzerland, a lot of sourcing happens in India,” said Joshi.

It targets to triple its production in the coming years. According to Joshi, the BWC currently operates in a market segment called affordable luxury or ‘bridge to luxury’, costing ₹1–2.5 lakh. The segment BWC operates in is estimated to be ₹3,400 crore in size. With a 12 percent YoY growth, it is likely to be ₹5,950 crore in 2025.

“In terms of consumer choice, there are segments of want, need, desire, and aspiration,” said Harish Bijoor, brand and business strategy specialist.

He further said that the wants category is a mix of the functional and the cosmetic, while the desire segment is all about the cosmetic and the high-end. The aspirations category is all about luxury and complete flaunt value. The needs segment is about time-keeping.

“The luxury watch market is a niche whose time has come in India. A very high disposable income and the need to look different drive demand, and India is the portal of opportunity,” said Bijoor.

(Reporting by bl Intern Sanjana B)