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.