INDIAN MECHANICAL WATCHES

Watches,the mere mention of the word brings to our minds TIME, individualism and style.Now with the mobile phones making their niche's into our pockets,the youth have relegated the Watch's primary function,that of keeping time to the background and now watches are sybols of style,affluence and individualism.Globalisation has brought in a plethora of Global watch brands like OMEGA,TAG HAUER,HUBLOT,BAUME MERCIER,LONGINES in the high end segment and FOSSIL,DKNY,,TOMMY HILFIGER,SWATCH, in the mid range segment,.,.,.,,.,and the list goes on.Our homegrown TITAN from the TATA's have captured a lion's share in the low end and mid range segment with their reliable quartz watches having a huge range of watches catering to a wide predominantly urban audience.

But digging deeper,and finding whom, rural INDIA trusts to keep its time,i came across brands like HMT,the now defunct ALLWYN and RICOH,..,.,.which dominated the indian watch market,both urban and rural,much before the quartz revolution in the 1970's.The oil crisis of the 70's further sounded the Death knell for mechanical movements which were more difficult to manufacture than the cheap quartz movements.Almost the entire swiss watch industry which failed to switch over to quartz technology was wiped out and our indian manufacturers like the HMT,ALLWYN,RICOH INDIA soon felt the pinch as they were caught napping as well.But quickly the BIG THREE caught on and started to manufacture the quartz movements.After a while,In the Late eighties TITAN entered the scene and ushered in the"many watches for different occasions" and with the backing of the TATA group and their marketing blitz almost drove the big three out of business.ALLWYN and RICOH INDIA perished but the govenrnment run HMT managed to survive simply because it had deeply penetrated the Indian rural watch market with its high affordability and bulletproof reliability of mechanical watches.Mechanical watches comprising of hand wound and automatic watches needed very little maintainance and since they never ran on batteries,talk about eco friendly watches,the rural folk respected these watcheds immensely.

The Indian youth of the 1970's like their elders had only the big three brands to keep their time with the occasionally smuggled foreign watches which most of the indian populace could ill afford apart from the Rich.They Predominantly wore mechanical watches,which even today can been seen on many wrists of the 60's and 70's Indian's.This is testimonial to the incredible longevity and quality of Indian mechanical watches,which unfortunately,the youth of 21'st century India have very little access to.This is courtesy HMT's mismanaged watch division which has pathetic marketing and poor access.A combination of these factors ensured that HMT was driven to obscurity in the indian watch market.But all this is set to change.In january,At the SAMAYABHARATI watch fair held at sri kanteerava stadium,Bangalore,HMT stunned many with its contemporary watches which looked very dressy like the international brands and priced at a fraction of their prices.Finally HMT might just be revived and see glory days which their high quality watches should always have seen.Here are a few shots of the watches.Please excuse the poor quality of the pics since i used a 2mp mobile phone cam for this at the fair.

The watches are 21 jewelled,HMT signed in house,Automatic movements.The movements have been tried and tested for years after being in action since the 1970's and are bulletproof reliable with very good accuracy.A surprise package from HMT was a multifunction watch in blue and white dial versions with HMT's own indigenously developed movement.Thats quite a remarkable achievement since very few watch makers make their own movements in this age of outsourcing,Even more so for HMT since it is still a loss making Psu run by the Government.KUDOS to the watch designers and engineers at HMT.

The PIC's above are of an HMT PILOT HANDWIND WHICH RUNS WITH 17JEWELLED MOVEMENT.

I have examples which are 30+ years old and still running very accurately,upto +/- 5 secs a day which is excellent since it costs just 515 INR here in INDIA.A fraction of what any handwind watch will cost anywhere,A tribute to HMT's great cost competency and engineering.Being a Watch collector myself,i Really hope that HMT gets it's marketing act together and makes these gems of watches available to my generation.Otherwise,INDIAN MECHANICAL WATCHES will soon be a thing of the past and we,the youth would lose a great opportunity of wearing such wonderful watches.

HERE ARE THE BASIC SPECS OF THE HMT HANDWIND WATCH'S MOVEMENT

17 jewelled HMT signed HAND WIND MOVEMENT

SHOCK PROOF UPTO 3KGM

WATER RESIST UPTO 30m

MOVEMENT NAME-0231

BPH-18600

ACCURACY- +/-10s/day

Cost<$10

HMT also makes automatic watches and at the top is a sneak very very exclusive preview of their TO BE LAUNCHED ,RAD SERIES AUTOMATIC MULTIFUNCTION WATCH RANGE which will be available in a month at their bangalore showroom for about 2500 to 3000 inr.please excuse for the poor quality pics.

moto yuva w230_2gigs of memory.,3000 indian gandhibacks.,now that could just revolutionise the mobile phone market

hi all,

i was watchin the moto yuva tvc recently,and i was pretty pissed off.You know why?

Because the tvc was a complete sham.,a tvc which proudly proclaims "moto yuva aaya,aur aapka beta gaya".,omg.,who the hell will ever want to buy his/her child a mobile phone which according to motorola will absolutely make its user oblivious to life around it.,.,so much so that the tvc features a dad who has to use a replica of his head rolling on the floor to get his teenage son's attention.,.,hell no.,.,parents,still being the decision makers in our BHARAT now will most probably be aghast at what a mobile phone could do and would be very happy to jettison their plans of buying their kids a mobile phone.,.if they weren't against them in the first place..and the moto yuva being a phone targeted at the young teeny weeny crowd,,motorola had just got their marketing strategy all screwed up.,And Here is a mobile phone maker on the verge of a sell out or a closedown due to their ever declining mobile phone sales and they have the audacity to launch such audacious pissing off ads.,.,.but what the hell,INDIA being a democracy,the ad director has his creative freedom to create such crappy ads not to mention our misfortune of having to bear with his ads in prime time tv coming as a total piss off interrupting our beloved cricket,india_australia battling it out on the cricket field.

Yesterday,suddenly Motorola pulled a fast one off with another tvc in which the moto yuva w230 was now being offered at a tad above the Rs 3k mark, with surprise surprise a built in mp3 player and to top it off a 2gb expandable memory slot.,.,.

Now thats news.,.,.thats real news which could just change motorola's sagging fortunes.,.,.

The moto yuva w230 in its earlier garb featured a colour phone with a candybar design with FM radio and a loudspeaker and the very hyped HINGLISH dictionary,(dunno who uses it anyway) and sold for a coupla thousand indian rupees.

Now this very phone,on steroids if i may call it so has a sweet 2gigs of expandable memory and FM stereo recording thrown in as well.This suddenly places the moto yuva w180 bang in the mp3 player territory and has virtually no competition at its price point from other mobile phone makers,especially Nokia.This launch just promises to revolutionise the entry level colour phone segment by offering features unheard for at this price and segment.

To get things into perspective,you could buy a phone which offers 2gb of mp3 music and a fm radio at just Rs3000,along with all its basic phone functions.Now who would want to buy an mp3 player with/without a radio for Rs 2000 when they get it bundled in a phone that is stylish as well.This will surely get the industry leader NOKIA thinking and other mobile manufacturers too will ready up their launches to counter the MOTO YUVA.And this also means that the Mp3 player prices,especially the ones like Philips go-gear and and the ipod shuffle and the creative zen series,to drastically drop prices to counter motorola's ultra aggressive pricing.The near future promises to be very very exciting as consumers would be able to access MP3 songs and radio on their very affordable mobile phones and everyone from the autorickshaw driver to the vegetable seller would have music on the go.,.,MP3 for everyone..,.,

Now that motorola have got their pricing bang on and a very usable user interface in the moto yuva,they will have to improve their battery life because the Mp3 player.,.,.er.,.,the moto yuva w230 is going to have to belt out a lot of tunes for it's owners..,.,.and lest i forget,motorola would do well to stop their distasteful ads and usher in some slick marketing emphasising on the killer price and music on the go feature of their new moto yuva w230.,This product of theirs has the potential to turn around their entire mobile phone division.,.I just can't wait to see the competition will react and how the indian consumer embraces music on the go,.,.,cheers to affordable technology that brings a smile to the common man's face.,.,.way to go moto.,,.