HMT watches clock ₹35 lakh sale in one day: How Jawaharlal Nehru's 1953 PSU became India's 'Timekeepers to the Nation' before Titan

There was a time when getting your hands on an HMT watch meant putting your name on a waitlist and waiting months. On August 15 this year, something eerily similar played out outside HMT's outlet in Bengaluru, except this time, people didn't wait months. They queued for hours, in a line that stretched nearly two kilometres.

By the end of Independence Day, HMT sold watches worth over ₹35 lakh in a single day. Union Minister for Heavy Industries and Steel, HD Kumaraswamy, broke the news himself, speaking to reporters in Hassan. More than 2,000 limited-edition pieces flew off the counters within hours, with the Gandaberunda edition, named after Karnataka's mythical two-headed bird emblem, reportedly the first to sell out completely. For a brand that shut down its watchmaking unit less than a decade ago, this is no small thing.

HMT began with Nehru's industrial vision

Hindustan Machine Tools, popularly known as HMT, was incorporated in Bengaluru on February 7, 1953, as a Central Public Sector Enterprise. Its original job was to manufacture machine tools that could help build India's industrial base. HMT says the company was created in the early years after Independence with the objective of producing the "mother machines" needed to build modern industry.


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The first HMT machine-tool factory came up in Bengaluru in 1953. The company later expanded into several engineering businesses and eventually diversified into watches, tractors, printing machinery, bearings and other products. The watch story came later.

How HMT entered the watch business and became India's Timekeeper

In 1961, the Government of India entrusted HMT with setting up a watch manufacturing business. HMT established a watch manufacturing unit in Bengaluru in collaboration with Japan's Citizen Watch Co. that year. The company says it became India's first manufacturer of wristwatches and absorbed the precision technology needed to manufacture and assemble the tiny components used in watches.

HMT's first hand-wound wristwatches were released by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, according to the company's account of its history. And HMT kept expanding.

By the 1970s and 80s, HMT controlled close to 90 percent of India's watch market. Its second watch factory was established in Bengaluru in 1972, while another factory came up in Srinagar the same year. HMT later added facilities at Tumkur and Ranibagh and expanded its ability to manufacture watch components in-house.

Models like the Pilot, Kohinoor, Sona and Janata weren't just popular, they were part of the furniture of Indian middle-class life, passed down from fathers to sons, gifted at graduations and weddings, worn by soldiers in the Army, Navy and Air Force. Over its lifetime, HMT is estimated to have produced more than 115 million watches, at one point making it one of the largest watchmakers anywhere in the world. And the slogan that went with all of this, "Timekeepers to the Nation", wasn't just marketing. For a whole generation, it was simply true.

HMT watches gradually moved beyond being a government manufacturing project. They became everyday watches for millions of Indians. The appeal was straightforward. The watches were mechanical, relatively simple and built for everyday use. Models such as the Janata, Pilot and Sona became closely associated with the brand.

The company's own history records several milestones in Indian watchmaking, including its automatic day-date, quartz, Braille and ana-digi watches. HMT also expanded beyond wristwatches. Its watch business became involved in manufacturing clocks, including floral, solar, international and tower clocks.

For a generation of Indians, an HMT watch was more than an accessory. It was often a first watch, a gift for an important occasion or something passed from one generation to another.

Then came Titan

HMT's monopoly didn't survive contact with the Tata Group. In 1984, Tata Industries teamed up with the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation to launch a new watch brand out of Hosur, a small town not far from HMT's own Bengaluru base. They called it Titan.

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Where HMT stuck with mechanical, hand-wound watches, Titan bet everything on quartz, smaller, more accurate, and far cheaper to mass-produce. Some of Titan's early technical talent reportedly came directly from HMT itself. When Titan began commercial production in 1987, it didn't just enter the market; it rewrote the rules of it, treating watches as fashion accessories rather than lifetime investments, complete with slick advertising and seasonal designs. HMT, still wedded to its mechanical roots and slower to modernise, watched its market share erode year after year. Import liberalisation in the 1990s didn't help either, opening the floodgates to international brands that HMT was in no shape to compete with.

Why HMT lost ground

The HMT story did not end because people suddenly stopped recognising the brand. The problem was that the watch market was changing rapidly, while HMT struggled with mounting losses and increasing competition.

The Government's Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the closure of HMT Watches in January 2016 along with HMT Chinar Watches and HMT Bearings. The government said the companies were loss-making and approved VRS/VSS packages for employees.

A year later, the government described HMT Watches as a pioneer in manufacturing watches for the common Indian citizen and noted that it had once been known as the "Time keepers of India". It said the watch business had been closed because of mounting losses and that there was no scope for revival in the prevailing competitive environment.

The end of the formal watch manufacturing operation, however, did not end the HMT name.

Why HMT still matters

That is where the ₹35 lakh Independence Day sale becomes interesting. The latest sales show that HMT still has something many brands spend years trying to build: an emotional connection with customers.

People who grew up seeing HMT watches on the wrists of parents, grandparents, teachers and government employees now have purchasing power of their own. For some buyers, an HMT is not simply a mechanical watch. It represents a particular period in India's history.

The recent Bengaluru sale also came amid demand for limited-edition and rare HMT watches. HMT today is not the same manufacturing giant it was during its peak years. The government closed HMT Watches as a subsidiary in 2016, while HMT Limited continues as a holding company with HMT Machine Tools and HMT International as operative subsidiaries; the watches business is now managed directly by HMT Limited.

But the brand has survived in the public memory.