Ck Venkataraman Mission Make Titan Every Womans Best Friend
From starting as a watchmaker in 1984 to perfumes, sarees, watches, jewellery, bags, diamonds, and more today, Venkataraman envisions a world where women dab and drape themselves in Titan—not only in India, but in many parts of the world
CK Venkataraman has a dream, or perhaps a plan. By December 2025, when he hangs up his boots as the managing director of Titan after a six-year stint, he likes to imagine a world where Titan is truly synonymous with being a woman’s best friend. “I would like millions of women coming out of their shower in the morning, starting with wearing the Titan Amalfi Blue or Noura perfume, putting on a Taneira saree, wearing a Titan Raga watch, putting on a Tanishq pendant, taking up a Titan Irth bag, and putting a CaratLane diamond into their bag for an evening party,” Venkataraman, the managing director of Titan Company tells Forbes India over a video call. That’s almost the entire bouquet of offerings from Titan that started out as a watchmaker in 1984.
That dream isn’t just limited to India, where he knows he stands a chance of making it work, especially if the company’s growth in recent years is anything to go by. “I would like this to happen in many parts of the world,” Venkataraman says. CKV, as he is commonly known on Titan’s sprawling campus, Integrity in Bangalore, has won the Forbes India Leadership Award for his ability to transform the existing business, clarity on strategy, and superior financial performance. Under his leadership, Titan’s profit grew nearly 150 percent in 2022, from ₹876 crore to ₹2,180 crore.
Since he took charge in 2019, the company’s revenues have grown from ₹19,000 crore to nearly ₹28,000 crore in 2022 and it is poised to better those numbers by the end of the current fiscal.
That’s some phenomenal numbers for what’s Tata Group’s second-largest company by market capitalisation. Titan has six divisions under it, a watches and wearables business, a jewellery division, an eyewear business, fragrances, and fashion accessories, a women’s clothing business, and an international business covering all the above categories. The company also has licensed brands such as Tommy Hilfiger and Police in India. But, even then, for Venkataraman, who took over the corner office in October 2019, after Bhaskar Bhat, the well-known former MD resigned after 17 years, the ride hasn’t been entirely smooth. Before he took charge as the CEO of the company that has over 2,100 stores across categories such as watches, eyewear, and jewellery, and brands such as Zoya, CaratLane, Mia, and Tanishq, Venkataraman had been the CEO of the jewellery arm.
Then, four months after he took the top job, Venkataraman was staring at chaos with the Covid-19 crisis that wreaked havoc across the global economy. “The first quarter of the first year of my new year was looking to be terrible in terms of financial performance,” Venkataraman says. “But we don’t take ourselves very seriously at Titan and we were not worried about being judged by the financial performance of the year. Therefore, I didn’t need to squeeze every penny.”
Instead, he knew he needed to turn his attention to those being hit hard by the pandemic, including distributors, partners, franchises, and off-roll employees. “I knew I would be judged more on my character, and I would certainly judge myself on my character and my resilience when it came to how I dealt with the more disadvantaged people,” Venkataraman says. “So, we put all of them first and didn’t think of cost-cutting at all. And that’s a very gentle and compassionate way of dealing with the stakeholders.”
