Titan to roll out frames from new facility in January

Titan Eyeplus, the eyewear business of the Titan Company, will start rolling out frames from its new manufacturing facility in Chikkaballapur from January.

Titan's eyewear unit CEO, Ronnie Talati, said, "The trial production is going on, and commercial production will begin  in the next two months. We have invested close to Rs 30 crore into this new frame manufacturing facility."

The company will also set up its own design studio, housing designers who will  work on exclusive frames for Titan.

"At present, a majority of companies in the industry source frames from China or Southeast Asia. So you can see similar frames in all stores. But with our new frame manufacturing facility, we want to have exclusivity, and new designs for our customers," Talati said.

The company has been manufacturing its own lenses for a few years now. Apart from its lens manufacturing facility in Chikkaballapur, Titan has also set up satellite lens manufacturing labs in Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It is planning to open more of such labs.

Titan Eyeplus, which has been there for a decade now, has 50 stores in Karnataka, with 34 in Bengaluru alone. On Thursday, it opened four new stores in the city.

"We have 483 stores across the country, and we want to double our footprint in 3-4 years.   In this fiscal alone, we have planned 50-60 stores," he said, adding that Bengaluru is the No 1 market for  the company.

"We are very bullish about our growth in Bengaluru,"  Talati said.

Titan Eyeplus closed the last fiscal year with a turnover of Rs 400 crore, and it is expecting 15% growth in this fiscal. "We are growing at 14-15%, which is above the industry growth of 5-6%," he said.