Titan buys HUG Innovations to strengthen smart wearables play
- IBEF
- February 12, 2020
Titan Company Ltd.’s watches and wearables business has announced the acquisition of HUG Innovations, a Hyderabad-based technology and wearables company.
A 23-member team of HUG Innovations has joined Titan in January 1st, 2020. This team will form the Hyderabad Development Centre and help with its expertise in hardware, firmware, software and cloud technology. With this acquisition, Titan also gets access to HUG Innovations’ consumer platform and Intellectual Property. Mr Raj Neravati, Founder of HUG Innovations, has been appointed as the AVP and Head of Technology for Wearables, Titan Company Ltd.
“We want to move from devices and hardware to developing a complete connected ecosystem. We want to engage with customers not just till the purchase of a Titan product but continue to engage after the purchase. We want to move away from number of units sold, to monthly active engagements with customers,” said Mr S Ravi Kant, CEO, Watches and Wearables Business, Titan Company.
“Earlier, we worked with partners like HP and Intel to launch smart watches and worked with a few start-ups to launch a smart band. We are also working very closely with a company in Singapore to develop some of our products. But now, with the acquisition of HUG Innovations, we believe the time has come to develop tech capability in-house,” Mr Kant added.
The watches and wearables business division has also announced the launch of ‘Titan Connected X,’ a full-touch smart watch with analogue hands, priced at Rs 14,995 (US$ 214.55). This move has been in line with an aim to accelerate company’s technology and wearables play.
This is Titan’s 13th product in the smart wearable’s portfolio, which will be available in all leading Titan stores starting March 2020. The smart watch will come in three variants loaded with 13 tech features like a 1.2 inch full-colour touchscreen with analogue hands, activity tracking, heart rate monitoring, find phone, camera control, sleep tracking, weather, calendar alerts and customisable watch faces, music and selfie control on the go.
Titan began its wearables journey in 2016 when it launched ‘Juxt’. The company has, since then, scaled up its presence with the launch of 12 wearables at price points ranging from Rs 700 to Rs 22,995 (US$ 10.02 to US$ 329.02). These products are majorly targeted at three consumer segments – Youth, Urban Male and Women. Recently, it included a new consumer segment – the First Jobber. Under 10 per cent of its watch sales comes from smart watches, which is expected to grow to under 20 per cent in three years.
Disclaimer: This information has been collected through secondary research and IBEF is not responsible for any errors in the same.
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