Titan had just 3 CEOs in 40 years. Who will be the fourth?

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₹700 crore to ₹15,000 crore. "Now, if Titan has good succession planning, the question or observation to ask is, what Titan is doing should ideally be happening at other companies. Identifying leaders early and then grooming them is the starting point," said Tandon.

Over the last five years, Venkataraman has steered the company to triple its revenue, even as its market cap jumped from $12 billion to $37.6 billion at the end of Friday. Titan, which started as Titan Watches, a joint venture between Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corp. (TIDCO) and the Tatas in 1984, began making watches in 1987.

Titan had ₹19.14 crore in sales in the year ended June 1988, the first full year of commercial operations, when it sold 3.4 lakh watches. Profit totalled ₹21 lakh. Titan, which declared its fourth-quarter and full-year earnings last Friday, reported a 22.8% jump from the year-ago period to end with ₹47,501 crore in revenue in FY24.

Profit improved 6.8% to ₹3,496 crore. Promoter holding in Titan stood at 52.90% at the end of March 2024, including 27.88% by TIDCO and 25.02% by Tata Sons and a few Tata group firms. The value of Tata’s shares in Titan stands at ₹78,529 crore ($9.4 billion), as Titan was valued at ₹3,13,868 crore ($37.6 billion) at the end of 3 May.

Both Bhat and Venkataraman launched new business divisions during their tenures, including eyewear and perfumes. But jewellery remains its mainstay, and its share (80.7% of the company’s revenue) is similar to what it was at the end of September 2019, when the incumbent CEO took over. Tandon, who served as one of the bankers when Titan went public, credits many of the company's success stories to Desai.