“Time does not wait for anyone, but it can indeed be changed,” declares ‘Made in India — A Titan Story’ at the outset, before informing us that those who do so are visionaries. Enter its visionary-in-chief: Xerxes Desai (Jim Sarbh), the enigmatic and fiercely loyal Tata employee whose quartz-laced ambitions helped put Titan watches on countless Indian wrists.
Based on Vinay Kamath’s book, ‘Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand’, the six-parter follows Xerxes and his mentor, JRD Tata (Naseeruddin Shah), as they attempt to revolutionise an Indian watch industry then dominated by the black market.
Returning after being “leased out” to the NBIDC, Xerxes seeks a challenge; Tata seeks validation that India can manufacture world-class watches. Set against the rain-soaked Art Deco soul of 1970s Bombay — and the corridors of the iconic Bombay House — the series feels almost rebellious in the OTT era. Rather than chasing constant spectacle, it finds drama in stillness, ambition and the painstaking business of building something from scratch.
At Tata, Xerxes inherits the dying Tata Press, decides print belongs to the past (which is amusing, considering you are probably reading this in print some five decades later, but I digress), and soon finds his true calling: watches. Not merely timepieces, but status symbols — indicators not just of the time, but whether time itself is running in the wearer’s favour. The Lakme of the Indian man, as the series cheekily puts it.
Alongside a small but mighty army comprising friend Akash Bansal (Vaibhav Tatwawadi), IIT graduate Gaurav Dhar (Lakshvir Singh Saran), and marketing genius Megha Mhatre (Kaveri Seth), Xerxes transforms what was once simply the “Watch Project” into one of India’s most successful consumer brands.
There is something disarmingly brave about filming the high-octane world of capitalism with such restraint. Across its nearly hour-long episodes, we see Xerxes as a devoted family man; Akash making peace with his father’s Alzheimer’s; and a romance quietly bloom between Gaurav and Megha over laddoos.
None of these threads feel forced, and the series rarely drags. The title suggests something closer to ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’; what you get instead is a slower, more human story.
Sarbh wears Xerxes like second skin, the receding hairline feeling almost self-generated. Shah commands every scene with the gusto of a patriarch who expects to be obeyed, and usually is.
That said, there is a moment when a minister is remarked to “hate capitalists”, and the series (unintentionally) puts up his case. It offers gems of capitalist empathy: Xerxes averting a workers’ strike with the “humane” solution of packing employees in office halls, or rebranding workers as “developers” and expecting everyone to feel better about it.
Most eyebrow-raising is the treatment of Titan exploiting a loophole in the MRTP Act, 1969 — which here prevents large firms from entering watch manufacturing — by creating a proxy company. The manoeuvre is presented as a stroke of genius rather than the ethically murky bypassing of a law designed to protect the interests of an innovation-rich, opportunity-starved young India.
In an oddly meta flourish, the series also exports this ethos beyond the screen. If ad breaks every few minutes — not an exaggeration — are not enough, episodes are accompanied by TV-news-style banner advertisements promoting everything from shoes to underwear. My personal favourite is Sarbh appearing in a Titan ad while playing the man who built Titan. Whichever executive came up with that probably grinned himself to sleep that night.
The relentless advertising ultimately undermines what is otherwise a refreshingly executed, if occasionally dogmatic, drama. A series about changing time ends up repeatedly reminding you that somebody, somewhere, would quite like to sell you a watch.
