Titan’s Eye Plus charts out steady growth

With an innovative approach to selling eyewear in India,

relatively young brand Titan Eye Plus from Titan Industries, plans to convert a functional product into a style accessory. Selling its eyewear at exclusive outlets, its same store sales grew by 40 percent in 2012-13 (over 2011-12).

When Titan had entered the eyewear segment in 2007, the market was not very organised. Some national level players were already active in this space and Titan had to be unique and differentiate from others to make a mark. Being a part of the Tata Group, which has a group-level Innovation Forum that facilitates a bi-annual program called Challenges Worth Solving (CWS), it became easy for the company to make a mark in this space.

It invited ideas from Tata managers through the CWS programme for innovative ideas and received 427 of them in response to this challenge. One of these ideas was to have an online, do-it-yourself eye-testing that the consumer could administer. As a result, in August last year, the company introduced 'Vision Check', a comprehensive self-administered online vision test, a first by an optical retail chain in the country.

Eye Plus’ parent is the fourth most-valued company in the 100-billion dollars (Rs 5,66,900 crores) turnover Tata Group. Titan Industries reported a 14.3 percent growth in revenue at Rs 10,213 crores in 2012-13, with jewelry and watches contributing Rs 8,108 crores and Rs 1,675 crores respectively. The other segments of the company that include eyewear (both Fastrack and Titan Eye Plus) and precision engineering businesses, contributed Rs 414 crores.