Yash Erande, Rahil Ansari, D Shivkumar: Corporate honchos who are serious watch enthusiasts

All that was left for Yash Erande and Rahil Ansari to do was grab violins and sing a ballad to their wristwatches. Ansari heads Audi India. Erande is a director at Boston Consulting Group. Both are nuts about watches. During cocktails at an event a few months ago, as platters of vegetarian sushi and wasabi potatoes passed around, the two spoke with knowledge and awe about the gleaming marvels on their wrists. And on their minds. “I’m wearing a Rolex GMT Master II,” said Erande.


“I like to wear mechanical watches, which have at least some complication other than telling time. This watch is a GMT and tells me the time in different parts of the world.” Over to Ansari in this tennis match of horology talk. “I’m wearing a Rolex Milgauss. It was an engagement gift from my wife in July 2010,” he said. “I like the green sapphire crystal on it. Another reason I like it is not that many people wear this model. I love watches, though there are some popular brands that are not my type. Mostly I like neat and clean watches and chronographs.”


Ansari stepped into the Aladdin’s cave of fine watches in 2008, when he bought his first expensive timepiece — a leather strapped Tag Heuer Carrera. “I still wear it, though I have changed the strap three times,” he said. “Watches are timeless. You don’t buy a watch to use it for two or three years. Some of them are investments.”


Erande also recently added a Tag to his collection — the Carrera Calibre Heuer 01 skeleton watch. He admires Jean Claude-Biver, the 69-year-old Dronacharya of watchmaking, and the president of LVMH’s watch division till illness forced him to step down recently. Ansari named the Jaeger LeCoultre (JLC) Master Compressor as one of the watches he admired, though he said he didn’t own it yet.

“ I like watches from Richemont (group, which owns JLC),” he said. “I have visited their horlogerie near Geneva. I have seen how they manufacture the products, how detailed it is, and then you understand why they are expensive. In fact, when I worked at Aston Martin, we had a JLC watch with which you could open the car.”

Further down the hall was the distinctive curly top of the tall Adhil Shetty, CEO, Bankbazaar.com. He was wearing a Cartier. But he did not know that. Watches were not his thing, he said. “I wear what my wife gifts me,” he said.

“I need her help to wind it up.” His wife, Reha Mitra, said, in mock admonishment, “That’s how much he knows about watches.” Reha knew her stuff. One of her gifts to him was a JLC Reverso Night and Day. “It’s a classic looking, reversible watch,” she said. Realtor Abhishek Lodha was another man that evening wearing a watch bought for him by his better half, Vinti. “He’s wearing an AP (Audemars Piguet) and I’m wearing a Harry Winston,” she said. “I like watches with big dials and leather straps. For him, I pick sporty good-looking watches.”

D Shivakumar’s watch was like him — slim and without frills — a Skagen. “I like clean dials and slim watches,” said Shivakumar, group executive president, strategy, Aditya Birla Group.

“I wear a Skagen, which is a very simple Rs 10,000 watch with a clean face.” Asked what his first watch was, Shivakumar said, “An HMT Jawahar.” People needed watches to keep track of time in the HMT era. Now you don’t. But fine products are not bought for utility alone. Erande put it well when asked why he bought watches when there was no real need to. “It’s really the fascination for exceptional engineering at a miniature scale,” he said. “It [a watch] shows what small cogs and wheels can do. And the feeling of a beating heart on your wrist — a heart which runs on your body’s energy — is quite unique.”.