The times they are a-changing. Xerxes Desai, after a 16-year stint at the top, is retiring as Titan's managing director, this month end. Taking over from Mr Desai - under whom Titan more or less re-wrote the way watches and to a large extent consumer durables are marketed in India - will be the long time heir apparent, the current deputy managing director, Bhaskar Bhat. This is effective 1 April. 

In a related development, Bijou Kurien, vice-president, sales and marketing, is most likely to take over as chief operating officer (COO) of the watch business unit. Titan's operations were split into two units - watches and jewellery - a couple of years ago. The jewellery business unit's (Tanishq) COO is Jacob Kurian. 

At this point it is unclear if Mr Desai will stay on the board of Titan Industries and continue as vice-chairman. As per the Tata Group's stated policy, the retiring managing director of a company has to step down from the board for a three-year period to give the new managing director enough operating space to chart his own course. Titan also has a new chairman. At the company's last annual general meeting, the company's long-standing chairman, A L Mudaliar, a Tidco nominee (Tidco holds a 28 per cent stake in Titan to Tata's 27 per cent) stepped down and M A Gowri Shankar, Tamil Nadu's industry secretary, took over as chairman of the company. 

Mr Xerxes Desai also said that he would continue to be a "guide and philosopher" to the new Titan management and jokingly called himself as "chief mentor emeritus."

He does not see himself getting into the boards of various companies post retirement as most retiring CEOs are wont to, saying, "being on boards is a deadly bore!" Saying he hasn't yet chalked out his life, post Titan, he said, "I am quite certain I want to ring down the curtain on the corporate, management, industry side of my life. I would like to turn over a new leaf and do something that is socially more relevant."

Mr Desai, a member of the Tata Administrative Service (TAS) has been with the Tata group for over 40 years and started work on the watch project in 1985 and moved to Bangalore and Titan from Tata Press where he was MD in 1986.

Titan then went on to reshape the entire Indian watch industry. It converted the almost entirely mechanical watch market into mainly an analogue one and in the process dislodged HMT, which more or less enjoyed a monopoly from its number one perch. 

Titan today has about 50 per cent of market share in the organised Indian watch market and a 20-25 per cent share of the overall watch market including the unorganised sector, said Mr Desai. 

Titan sold around 6.5m watches last year. It posted a turnover of around Rs 700 crore and a net profit of Rs 23 crore in '00-01. It is expected to see a similar topline this year on slightly lower watch sales but higher jewellery sales.