Swiss-watchmaker to woo Indians with ‘Pride of India’ range

Premium Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet (AP) aims to woo high-end Indian

customers with its edition of ‘Pride of India’ watches. The watchmaker would use the Ashoka Chakra - shown at the centre of the Indian national flag - on some of its expensive watches priced up to one million dollars (over Rs six crore). The company expects 'Pride of India' collection with dials depicting the 24-spoke dharmachakra, or wheel of law, to establish a stronger connect with Indian customers.

While AP already sells quite a few watches in India, its Managing Director for Asia, Olivier Bottinelli feels that it is difficult to build a local market in the country since though Indian are aware and passionate about watches, they prefer picking the exclusive ones on their trip to London, Dubai or Singapore. He also finds India growing in last one year, on par with China as far as luxury spending is concerned. Moving forward, the brand would focus on creating collections made for Indian audiences. It had launched two Sachin Tendulkar watches and 70 percent of the 150 pieces of those collections was sold in India. To ramp up retailing in the country, the company would concentrate more on existing two partners and may add one more retailer by next year.

Last year, AP's sales were 700 million Swiss Francs (over Rs 4,500 crores) and it produced 34,000 thousand pieces, of which 35 percent were sent to Asia, 30 percent to the US, 30 percent to Europe and the remaining to the Middle East. Asia is the number one market and Hong Kong is the largest destination for the brand.