When we think of Indian home grown watch companies we think of the mighty Tata group’s Titan and the iconic HMT. Sometimes we overlook or tend to forget ALLWYN which gave us some really beautiful time pieces yet couldn’t sustain their success and had to succumb. Initially, the company launched watches with the intention of capturing HMT’s market but ended up creating a niche fan following of its own.
Allwyn Limited, a state owned company which was established in 1942 (before independence) set up a different watch division or to use the fancy term SBU (strategic business unit) in 1981. The parent company based out of Hyderabad was known for making trucks, scooters refrigerators etc before venturing into watches. The company wanted to take on the mighty HMT which had a special place in the hearts of millions of indians. But how to compete against such a brand, specially when the company is known to make automobiles or electronic equipments with no apparent connection to watches. Well the company reached out to Japan and sought help from Seiko!!
HMT had made the same attempt but they had failed. When HMT was being conceived as a watch company, India didn’t have any home grown brand hence lacked the technical know how. They looked upto their world war ally, Japan for transfer of intellectual property and knowhow. Seiko was their first option but the deal couldn’t go through. Citizen saw this as an opportunity to enter the Indian market and collaborated with HMT to create the famous 17j movement. Seiko might have thought it to be a lost chance hence when Allwyn reached out to them for collaboration they agreed.
The company made quartz and mechanical watches and the designs were quite contemporary for the era. in 1987 the company’s jingle for advert was composed by none other the maestro A. R. Rahman himself.
But loses kept on piling mainly due to quartz crisis and little bit due to opening up Indian boundaries and the watch division was forced to shut done in 1995 and file for bankruptcy. The entire group had somewhere around 6500 employees. The truck division which had collaborated with Nissan was also facing trouble and subsequently was sold to Mahindra & Mahindra. The refrigerator division was acquired by Tata group. It was rumoured that HMT had shown interest and was keen on buying the watch division, but HMT itself was under financial distress.
Allwyn reminds me of Universal Geneve, a brand that perished and became sough after!!!
The Enigmatic Pen 