There is a wonderful, emotional feeling you get when watching a documentary like Made in India: The Titan Story. Seeing how an Indian company took on global giants, made beautiful watches affordable for regular people, and won the trust of an entire country fills you with genuine pride. It is the exact kind of feeling that made me walk straight into a store on a Sunday afternoon and gladly spend ₹52,000 on two brand-new Titan watches.

But once I got home and the excitement settled, a few unsettling questions started to creep in. The documentary does a fantastic job of celebrating Titan’s massive success, but it quietly skips over one of its biggest and most expensive secrets: What on earth happened to Favre Leuba?

As someone who actually owns a limited-edition Favre Leuba, pulling back that curtain feels incredibly personal. It reveals a huge, costly mistake by India’s biggest corporate giant—and uncovers an entirely different, remarkable story that deserves its own documentary: Made by an Indian Company: The Ethos Story. It is a tale about an incredibly brave, terrifying gamble on a “dead” brand that everyone else had given up on. Because if there is one golden rule the watch world respects, it is this: truly great luxury watches are either made in heaven, or they are made in Switzerland, just like fine scotch that can only be born in Scotland.

Gold Rate

June 29 ,2026 - Time 10.30Hrs

Gold 24 KT ₹ 1 42,600 /-

Gold 22 KT ₹ 1,32,300 /-

Silver/Kg ₹ 2,22,400/-

Platinum ₹ 88,000/-

Recommended rate for Nagpur sarafa Making charges minimum 13% and above

The Beautiful Swiss Disaster

When the Tata Group bought the rights to Favre Leuba in 2011 for about ₹14 crore, everyone thought it was a guaranteed success. Founded all the way back in 1737, Favre Leuba is the second-oldest Swiss watch brand in the world. They were famous for making legendary, tough mechanical watches for deep-sea divers and mountain climbers.

Tata figured that by combining this historic Swiss name with their endless corporate cash, they could easily build a global luxury empire. Over the next ten years, they pumped a jaw-dropping ₹275 crore into the business.

But luxury watchmaking is an emotional, finicky world that doesn’t care about giant corporate budgets. Tata tried to run it like a mass-market factory. While the corporate bosses focused on heavy, oversized, industrial designs, the actual watch market was moving in the exact opposite direction. Tata built massive, clunky watches that looked like heavy machinery, completely missing the trend where real watch lovers were craving slim, elegant, vintage-style watches they could wear every day. Because the designs missed the mark, luxury boutiques in Europe and the Middle East simply refused to stock them.

The brand lost money every single year. When the pandemic hit in 2020, the whole project collapsed. Tata finally gave up, admitting defeat and writing off a devastating loss of well over ₹280 crore. Favre Leuba was left for dead, buried under mountains of corporate debt.

The Pure Audacity of Ethos

In May 2023, a lesser-known Indian company called Ethos Watches stepped into the wreckage and announced they were buying Favre Leuba from Tata.

To outsiders, this looked like complete madness. Ethos wasn’t a multi-billion-dollar giant with an endless financial safety net. They were a specialized watch retailer. If this project failed a second time, it wouldn’t just be a minor setback, it could completely ruin them. They were willingly catching a falling knife that had just sliced right through Tata’s fingers.

So, why take such a terrifying risk? Because Ethos possessed something Tata completely lacked: a collector’s soul. The visionaries driving this risk were the father-son duo behind Ethos—Yashovardhan Saboo (Chairman & Managing Director) and Pranav Saboo (Managing Director & CEO). They didn’t see a broken company; they saw a beautiful, mismanaged piece of history. They knew that you cannot strip a Swiss watch of its geography or its soul; it has to be crafted by true Swiss experts. Supported by their Chief Operating Officer, Mukul Khanna, they knew they had two secret weapons to pull off the impossible:

1. They Already Owned the Stores

When Tata owned the brand, they had to spend millions begging independent global stores to put their watches in display cases. Ethos didn’t need to beg, because they are the store. As India’s largest luxury watch retailer with over 60 high-end boutiques, they already had direct access to over 300,000 wealthy buyers who walk into their shops every day to buy Rolexes and Omegas. They instantly solved the distribution problem that broke Tata.

2. They Listened to the Showroom Floor

Tata designed watches inside corporate boardrooms. Ethos designed them by listening to real people talking on the showroom floor every single day. They knew exactly what modern watch lovers wanted.

They immediately threw out Tata’s clunky designs. They shrunk the watches down to elegant, classic sizes (37mm to 41mm) and dug deep into the old Swiss archives to bring back beautiful, vintage styles. To get the watch community talking, the Saboo’s brought in Patrik Hoffmann, the legendary former global head of luxury watchmaker Ulysse Nardin—to steer the brand’s operations directly in Switzerland, ensuring the watch maintained that pure, unadulterated “Swiss-made” DNA.

The Ultimate Payoff

The proof that Ethos’s massive gamble worked arrived in April 2026. Just 18 months after Ethos took over, Favre Leuba made its official debut at Watches and Wonders Geneva—the absolute Olympics of the watch world, sharing the grand stage with legendary giants like Patek Philippe and Rolex.

Getting an invite to that show is something raw corporate money can never buy; it requires genuine respect from the Swiss watch industry. It is the ultimate playground of elite brands, a stage so exclusive that even the world’s largest luxury conglomerate, LVMH, recently had to buy out an iconic Swiss clockmaker just to strengthen its own position alongside giants like Rolex.

But Ethos didn’t stop at wristwatches. To prove they were serious about global luxury, they expanded their empire by fully acquiring L’Epée 1839—Switzerland’s premier creator of high-end mechanical clock art. Furthermore, Ethos has secured exclusive partnerships to be the sole seller of ultra-prestigious independent Swiss brands like H. Moser & Cie. and Jacob & Co. inside India, making them an undisputed powerhouse in the luxury world.

Two Different Types of Pride

When you wear your new Titan watches, you should feel incredibly proud. It is a beautiful celebration of Indian manufacturing, scale, and making good products accessible to millions of people.

But looking at a limited-edition Favre Leuba on your wrist serves as a striking reminder that the luxury world requires a completely different touch. Tata proved that you can buy history, but you cannot force prestige through raw corporate power. By trusting their gut, understanding consumer psychology, and taking a brave, terrifying risk on a dead brand, the team at Ethos Watches did the impossible: they gave a dying Swiss icon an authentic, thriving heart.