TANISHQ

Tanishq is the leading, prominent jewellery brand in India. It is the largest, most desirable and fastest growing jewellery brand. It pioneered the concept of branded jewellery in India. Being a division of Titan Industries Limited, a company promoted by TATA group, it is one of India’s largest conglomerates. The name was formed by combining ‘Tata’ and ‘Nishk’ (meaning necklace). Another combination is ‘Tan’ (body) and ‘Ishq’ (love). Located at Hosur, Tamil Nadu, the 135,000 sq. ft. factory is equipped with the latest and most modern machinery and equipment.
Tanishq has an exquisite range of gold, gems and diamond jewellery system prevalent in the country. It has set up production and sourcing bases with thorough research of the jewellery crafts in India. It introduced innovations like karat-meter, the only non-destructive means to check the purity of gold. It also introduced professional retailing in the un-organized jewellery bazaar, where women can shop with comfort and peace, without worrying about the purity of the jewellery they are buying. It has successfully taken up the challenge of transforming this frontier into a reliable consumer space by bringing to it all the virtues and benefits that branding offers.

HISTORY:
The Tanishq saga began in the early 1990s, primarily fuelled by the fabled TATA entrepreneurial spirit and partly forced by circumstance. The splendid Titan watches success story was already up and running, and happened to need more foreign exchange to purchase the imported components and machines required to keep up with the burgeoning watch production. But with India going through a foreign exchange crisis, there was no help coming in, forcing Titan to search for a business that would earn them the required foreign currency. Indian-made jewellery was already a big foreign currency earner and being strongly supported by the central government, and also happened to be a very good fit with the watch business as articles of adornment. The best known brand names in both Europe and America had watches and jewellery together, offering further proof that the two industries are intrinsically linked.
It was a business with a huge wealth potential and it added a very feminine offering to Tata’s long line of products that appealed mostly to the opposite gender. It also called for an organization that inspired trust and had high order design, manufacturing, marketing and retailing skills, and Tata fit the bill on all accounts. It was launched in 1994 as a range of jewellery and jewellery watches meant for the European & American markets. But things began to change globally around this time, and the West entered a protracted period of slow economic growth followed by recession. Supplying jewellery to the Americans & Europeans suddenly no longer seemed an attractive proposition.
Initially, the criticism for Titan’s foray into jewellery was loud and often bitter. Eventually, however, the critics were silenced. Tanishq, today, is perhaps the only major Tata brand with a strong appeal for women. Very importantly, Tanishq has brought to the market a whole new standard of business ethics and product reliability, in the process bringing about a transformation in the manner in which jewellery is bought and sold in India.
It has created a revolution in the Indian jewellery trade and in jewellery buying behaviour, and continues to set new parameters of excellence for others to follow. The Indian market, on the other hand, opened its doors to the world, and was now flooded with foreign currency. By the time Tanishq established its manufacturing facility and entered the market, the premises on which the project was based had altered substantially. Foreign currency was no longer an issue, import licences were easy to obtain and the global demand-supply equation for jewellery had shifted in favour of buyers. Tanishq, therefore, switched tracks and shifted its focus to the Indian market and develop a somewhat grandiose vision of the brand as a composite avatar of Cartier, Tiffany, Esprit, and Ernest Jones all rolled in one.

CHALLENGES:
When Titan entered into the jewellery making, the Indian jewellery market was highly localized. People prefer to buy gold jewellery for investment purpose not for ornamentation secondly it was an unspeakable trend that people mostly rely on their family jewellers and prefer to buy gold jewelleries from the trusted shops only. One of the biggest challenges that Tanishq faced was the set mind set of the Indian consumer. It was hard to sell sleek and contemporary design to Indian customers who were customized to use traditional gold jewellery. Tanishq dealt in the 18-carat gold jewellery and the Indian market considered gold jewellery as a good investment option, for that they preferred to buy pure gold jewellery. Tanishq carried out market research and it revealed several loopholes in the marketing and business strategy of Tanishq. Vasant Nangia, erstwhile Chief Operating Officer, Tanishq said, “When we launched the Tanishq range, our designs were not appreciated initially as they were believed to be extremely Western. Also, we offered only 18 carat gold.”
Some of the local jewellers have operations larger than local operations of Tanishq. There are more than 25,000 small family-owned jewellers. Though the jewellery was mostly bought for the women, the actual buying was done by the male members with consultation from elders.
Family owned jewellers are essentially retail stockists. They invest in some of their inventory, and vendors supply additional designs through a consignment arrangement. At the end, the jewellery value chain is an unorganized group of karigars, most of them working from their homes. A head karigar controls 10 to 20 karigars; a vendor controls 3 to 4 head karigars. The vendor shows the design to the head karigar, who allocates jobs to his karigars, and delivers it back within a pre-fixed time period. The entire jewellery value chain runs on a per gram basis, certain designs with more gold usage are more popular among karigars.

TITAN:
Titan Industries is the world's fifth largest wrist watch manufacturer and India's leading producer of watches under the Titan, Fastrack, Sonata, Nebula, RAGA, Regalia, Octane & Xylys brand names. It is a joint venture between the Tata Group, and the Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (TIDCO). Its product portfolio includes watches, accessories and jewellery, in both contemporary and traditional designs. It exports watches to about 32 countries around the world with manufacturing facilities in Hosur, Dehradun, Goa and manufactures precious jewellery under the Tanishq brand name, making it India's only national jewellery brand.
Prior to Titan’s entry, 97 percent of the watch market was mechanical, and electronic watches had a bad reputation due to poor performance of the early digital watches which were introduced in the mid-1980s. Quartz was a market leader at that time, but could only smuggle in watches due to Indian market closed to global trends. People were sceptical about these watches.
Titan changed the retail environment and the way people thought about watches- from buying inexpensive watches to stepping into exclusive watch showrooms, and buying a watch that made a statement. Titan redefined the watch industry, with Quartz becoming the new standard, and HMT fading away.
Initially Titan targeted the upper middle class, but later moved into the segment of college students and young professionals who wanted watches as gifts, accessories and fashion statements. So, Titan now has various brands catering to different audience, like Sonata (a lower end brand), Raga (for working women), Fastrack (targeted at younger generation) and Nebula (with its high-end gold collection).