Ulysse Nardin's India Strategy

Patrik P. Hoffmann, the CEO who leads this storied Swiss luxury watch major from the front, is clear about its future in India: monobrand boutiques, timepieces showcasing cutting-edge innovations in watchmaking and design, and limited editions that are only available in the brand’s stores.

- Deepali Nandwani

A noisy, albeit well-appointed and wide, lane in Borivali, in the far Western suburbs of Mumbai, abutting a buzzing railway station, seems to be an unlikely destination for a legendary Swiss watchmaker like Ulysse Nardin. Wouldn’t a store in South Mumbai, or a store in the city’s suburb of swing, Bandra, serve the brand better?

However, this question belies one reality: the quotidian stretch in Borivali, called Lokmanya Tilak Mark, and popularly known as LT Marg, anchors several luxury watch and jewellery brands. It hosts a plush Rolex store; there are multi-watch brand boutiques like The Prime Luxury Watch Boutique and Khimani Watch Company, selling brands like Omega, Rado and Balmain; Tag Heuer has a store on this very lane; and so do jewellers like Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri and Kalyan Jewellers. And there are more glittering names that the lane is adding on.

The question also doesn’t take into consideration another reality: in India, traditional luxury consumers now have another group to contend with, the nouveau riche lovers of the good life — the diamond merchants, the new entrepreneurs, the service and IT industry czars — many of whom live and work in the suburbs. The shifting of the diamond bourse to Bandra Kurla Complex, the city’s new capitalist haven, and the choice made by the merchants to move out of smaller homes in south of Mumbai to live in sprawling suburban residential enclaves, add to the urgency to build new centres of luxury retail, away from the traditional stomping grounds of old money.