Titan: Conquering business with trust & empathy

Titan Eye+, India’s largest eyewear company, has launched its first international store in the UAE, adding to its footprint of 860+ Titan Eye+ stores across 300 different cities in India. On the occasion of the UAE store opening at the BurJuman Mall, we got a chance to converse with Saumen Bhaumik, CEO of Titan Eye+ to discuss the brand’s future plans and strategies for international expansion.

With international expansion on your mind, how do you eye the UAE market?
We see immense growth potential in this market. We have ventured out only after planning it thoroughly for years now. Eyewear is firstly a necessity-driven category and secondly, it is not ethnicity dependent, unlike jewellery. All that a customer cares about is value. We are a solution provider who respects and values your requirement. So, this value-oriented approach sets us apart from the rest in the category and we are sure the customer will also realize this and come back to us for repeat orders.
 

Titan is a legendary name in India, bringing that heritage overseas have you really tweaked your approach when stepping into UAE?
Titan already has an annual production capacity of close to two million lenses and one million frames. We have only tightened our robust production capacity to become more agile in the overseas market. While, this 1100-square-foot flagship store will house Titan Eye+’s unparalleled range of high-quality eyewear, contact lenses, accessories, and sunglasses. A strong tech and style focus in the product mix has been brought in to seamlessly tie up with empathy-driven in-store services to give you an eye care retail experience that covers all bases.

When you speak of empathy, how do you actually translate it in terms of your service?
Empathy is not just a loose word that we use, but a very strong principle that we follow. We do not believe in push selling our products to our customers, but we access their needs very minutely. For instance, in the past, we haven’t sold lenses to one of our customers whom we felt had an unstable power or was progressing towards a cataract. We are very bullish about the UAE market and its strong 100+ nationalities are a big business opportunity for us and we are ready to tap into key insights and learn from a truly global group of customers here.

What next? How do you plan to expand from here on?
We are really hopeful that a tried and tested location like BurJuman is perfect for us as it attracts this diverse and discerning audience. From here we want to open a couple of more stores in GCC within this year. But whatever we do, expertise and empathy will always remain our strong suit and core values driving everything at Titan Eye+, from customer service to product innovation. Our demonstrated ability to amalgamate expertise in optometry, product design and manufacturing and most importantly our obsessive affection for our customers sets us apart. While our Red Dot winning designs – Signature Frames, ClearSight and Ultima lenses are testimony to our expertise, our Google rating of 4.9/5 by 0.6 million customers epitomises our empathy. Most of our customers see us as the experts who care. This is what we bring to Dubai.

With such a positive outlook, the brand is all set to explore new horizons on international shores. The in-store services for the brand include the Zero Error Eye Test promising 100 percent accuracy designed through a technological partnership with world-renowned eye hospital Sankara Nethralaya. To date, Titan Eye+ has trained about 4500 optometrists across India in this regard. The eyewear store also hosts a variety of over 1000 frames and sunglasses from 40+ brands like Titan, Fastrack, RayBan, Vogue, Oakley, Tommy Hilfiger, and other premium brands like Cartier, and Dior, among many others.

Anurima Das