Bangalore :
Those were the days when Bajaj scooters used to capture the middle-class imagination. As did Ambassador cars and HMT watches. Bangalore-based businessman Nikhil Tivari was in high school when his mother gifted him a HMT Rajat automatic watch in the 1970s.
Like the scooter, there was a waiting period for the Rajat — of over 10 months. Tivari’s mother booked a Rajat by paying a few hundred rupees as advance. “The watch could have been a future keepsake but it was stolen,” says the watch connoisseur, who owns over 40 one-off timepieces and popular brands.
But Tivari got lucky the second time when he bought an HMT Astra digital watch in the early 1990s. “I was one of the first 20 customers to own an Astra, which then cost Rs 392. They were selling it in the black market in Delhi for Rs 1,000. Long before luxury brands came into the country, HMT was the timekeeper of the nation. You would wear it with pride,” says Tivari, who treasures his HMT watch.
HMT is in a bad way, but many young watch lovers today love the idea of owning and investing in vintage HMT watches. The value of some of its brands has appreciated from a few thousand rupees to a couple of lakhs.
Working man’s timekeeper
Chennai-based Mukund Sivaraman owns 15 HMT watches, including a few Pilots and Janatas. These are popular for their 17-jewel manual wind mechanical movements. The jewels may not be of great value and are mainly used to reduce metal-to-metal friction. “I am fascinated by the mechanical movements, more so because they work like a machine. The Pilot and Janata were very affordable and represented the working man’s watch of the 1970s and 1980s. You could get them for less than Rs 1,000,” says the director of software consultancy firm Banu.com.
Sivaraman said collectors across the world are making enquiries for HMT’s mechanical watches. “They last a lifetime and are much cheaper than mechanical watches from Seiko,” he said. The mainspring does the magic and it’s hand wound.
For UK-based software professional Nimish George, his HMT watch has become a family heirloom. His grandfather James Puthuran, then 90, gifted it to him as an anniversary gift 50 years ago. “It still works perfectly,” says George.
HMT watches have become a talking point on many discussion forums like forums.watchuseek.com, PMWF.com (Poormanswatchforum.com) and thewatchforum.co.uk. Bangkok-based Christopher Sisti, in a blog post last year, described HMT watches thus: “They look retro with a vintage feel, which is very cool if you ask me. The watches being mechanical is cool too, because for that price ($12) you could only get a cheap battery watch in America.”
VD Wadhwa, director of All-India Federation of Horological Industries, says he still treasures the HMT Janata watch he bought when he was in school. “HMT’s automatic watches powered by the Miyota movement from Citizen were hugely popular among watch enthusiasts for their durability and accuracy,” he says. Wadhwa has over 100 watches in his collection.
In keeping with time
* HMT set up a watch manufacturing unit in Bangalore in collaboration with Citizen Watch Co, Japan, in 1961
* First batch of hand-wound wrist watches was released by then Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
* Launched India’s first automatic day-date, quartz, Braille, ana-digi watches
* In 1975, the watch factory in Bangalore was expanded to manufacture main spring, hair spring and shock-absorber components. With this, HMT totally acquired the technology of mechanical watch-making
* Set up manufacturing facilities to produce 2 million watch components in Tumkur (1978) and Ranibagh (1985)
* Tumkur factory was partially converted to manufacture quartz analog watches in collaboration with Japanese watchmaker Citizen
(Source: HMT website and internet)
source: http://www.timesofindia.indiatimes.com / Home> City> Bangalore / by Shilpa Phadnis, TNN / March 25th, 2013