The Fashion Scoop · India Today Podcasts

What does it take to design iconic watches? | The Fashion Scoop, Ep 41

·27 min·1 clip

Titan Edge’s carbon-fiber watch weighs 22 grams and is “seven times stronger than steel.”

A watch begins as a family memory. The host remembers going to a Titan store with her grandparents and parents, so nostalgia is already in the room before Mahendra Chauhan joins. As Titan's design head, he says the company's forty-year run worked because it kept asking what people wanted from watches, not just what a watch could do. Function has slipped into the background. He says a contemporary watch has almost zero functional utility, which leaves emotional utility to carry the weight. That thought gives the episode its thread. Before Titan, Mahendra worked on buildings and bicycles, including early concept work behind the popular Ladybird bicycle. The host perks up at that. Ladybird was her first bicycle, and she still remembers the bright purple and pink colors that made it feel irresistible as a child. Suddenly the design talk has some spark. Mahendra links buildings, bicycles, and watches through details made for the audience and the consumer. Watches need a slightly different read, though. They are less about timekeeping now and more about what people feel when they wear them. Trends come in gently. He points to nostalgia and retro revival, with neo-futurism or neo-retro as directions watch design is following. The host keeps the pace easy, asking how categories compare and what watch lovers might notice next. They end casually, with Bangalore weather, Delhi air quality, traffic, and how it felt to talk through his process.

As heard by us

A warm design conversation that treats watches as emotional objects, not just timekeepers.

Titan is framed as more than a watch brand here: it becomes a quiet emotional object in Indian homes, and Mahendra Chauhan helps explain why. His path from architecture to bicycles to watches gives the discussion a grounded, lived-in texture, while his points about design detail…

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Why you'd press play

If you care how a watch becomes an object of feeling, press play.

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