Titan Company invested more than ₹100 crore in technology in 2015 and this investment came in handy during the Covid pandemic when customers were shopping from home. One example was the introduction of video selling — sale of various products through video calls. In the calendar year 2019, the company’s total video sales would have been not more than ₹1 crore. However, in July 2020, which was two-three months after the pandemic started, Titan sold ₹100 crore through video, said CK Venkataraman, Managing Director, Titan Company, in his address at a retail summit.

“We did ₹1,000 crore of video sales in one year, as opposed to less than one crore in the previous year,” he said in his keynote address at the Chennai Retail Summit 2023 on Tuesday. He shared with the audience various trends that’s going on in the retail sector.

Video sale

He explains that video sale is done via WhatsApp. A salesperson in a showroom demonstratesa necklace to the customer for example, by wearing it. Some seven-eight necklaces are shown like this. The customer picks up the piece of their choice. Whereas if she had to come without this, she would have probably spent more than an hour, which in those days was perceived as risky by people.

“Video sale has become much less today because people have come back to the stores, but I am just telling you what scale it can bring,” he said.

Venkataraman said one of the biggest successes of Titan is the franchising . “We treat franchisees as partners; as a family and not just as business associates. The partnership indicates involving them in key decisions; listening to them, spending a lot of time with them and being there in the market in the smallest of towns. That’s what we call partnership. If you practice that in a very systematic manner, including generating annual, biannual conversations of formal feedback from them, how to improve businesses, you can build a very strong foundation and reach much deeper than you can do yourself,” he said.

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