Titan enters affordable smartwatches with new variants from Sonata brand

Company claims these are the cheapest hybrid smartwatches in the country; will be available at Titan stores and e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Flipkart

Buoyed by its success in smartwatches, Titan Limited has entered the affordable smartwatch category via the Sonata stable. The Sonata brand has come up with two variants of affordable smartwatches called Sonata Stride Analog and Sonata Stride Pro.

Priced between Rs 3,000-Rs 3,500, the watches will be available at Titan stores and e-commerce websites such as Amazon and Flipkart. The company claims these are the cheapest hybrid smartwatches available in the country.

“These smartwatches help you measure your activity level and since it looks like an analog watch, it doubles up as a lifestyle accessory as well,” said Utkarsh Thakur, marketing head at Sonata. The company expects these affordable smartwatches to account for around 5 per cent of Sonata’s overall revenue in the next one year. Sonata which is a Rs 600 crore business, has another sub-brand called Sonata SF for digital watches that accounts for around 20 per cent of its revenue.

Sonata smartwatch

The Sonata Stride smartwatches have a motor sensor which allows one to track steps and the quality of sleep. The watches, which are being manufactured at Titan’s Hosur plant in Karnataka also have a button to locate one’s phone. When double pressed, the phone’s torch and ringtone get activated. The watch is supported by the in-house built Sonata Stride mobile app which is compatible with both Android and iOS.

The brand has been growing on a consistent 10-11 per cent yoy over the past few years both in terms of value and volumes. To keep up with the changing trends, Sonata, which sells over 5.5 million watches annually, has undergone a shift in its design philosophy in the past two years. “So apart from being a Tata product, the one thing which distinguishes us is its rapidly transforming design language which is amenable to the contemporary consumer,” says Thakur. It democratises a lot of watches trends in an affordable bracket such as rose gold watches, slim watches, large dialled watches and so on, he says.

The smartwatches segment overall has been heating up with Google acquiring FitBit for $2.1 billion earlier this month to take over Apple smart watches, the market leader so far. For homegrown company Titan, smartwatches segment forms 10 per cent to its total sales and is growing at a rate of 85 per cent annually. The company has launched several smart watches under the Titan and Fastrack brand over the years such as TitanWE and Fastrack ReflexWAV.