BOTTOM LINE
Corporate Story With Patriotic Sentiment
PLATFORM
Amazon MX Player
RUNTIME
5 hr 30 min (6 Episodes)
What Is the Show About?
In 1978, a sidelined executive at Tata, Xerxes Desai, risks his career to launch an Indian-made watch brand in a market dominated by imports and smuggling. Facing constant rejection, financial hurdles and indifference, he drives his team through intense pressure and conflict. The dream comes with a price: alienating allies and nearly crippling the company, but is it worth it?
Performances
The casting choices are excellent. The actors, both the younger lot and the veterans, lend a distinct identity to their parts with infectious enthusiasm. Jim Sarbh, playing Xerxes Desai, Titan’s humane leader with a penchant for taking tough decisions, commands attention. Naseeruddin Shah and he share many scenes, and their on-screen equation is a delight to watch.
Lakhvir Singh Saran, cast as Gaurav Dhar, a committed yet lovestruck engineer who falls for a marketing colleague, is getting better with every opportunity. Kaveri Seth is a breath of fresh air, playing the only woman in Titan’s founding team. Vaibhav Tatwawadi is impressive and provides the necessary emotional impetus in the show’s crucial moments.
Analysis
How do you tell the success story of a brand without sounding like a desperate, paid advert? Made in India: Titan Story, the show based on journalist Vinay Kamath’s book Titan: Inside India’s Most Successful Consumer Brand, now streaming on Amazon MX Player, overcomes the challenge smartly. It positions not just a watch brand as the Tatas’ success story, but also that of a nascent, pre-liberalised India.
When Xerxes Desai is asked to revive a near-defunct Tata Press, he instead envisions a watch brand as the identity of an emerging nation. To reinforce this, in one sequence, JRD Tata is particularly offended when a Swiss watch manufacturer suggests India does not have what it takes to make watches. Desai gets five years to realise this ambition. This is the story of a team that made Titan possible.
Made in India begins as a tale of a mentor and a disciple. JRD Tata, with all his worldly wisdom and his desire to bring a human touch to business, entrusts Desai with Titan. It is also a tale of two friends: Desai and his long-time associate Akash Bansal, who are given the reins to build something from scratch. They have the freedom to innovate, but face roadblocks at every stage of execution.
The show takes viewers through the various phases of building the Titan brand: from securing bank loans and assembling a team to setting up a manufacturing unit in Hosur, while navigating challenges in marketing, distribution and advertising. However, it is careful to fill the gaps in this familiar business cycle with meaningful emotional threads, detailing what the team gains and loses along the way.
What is a quintessentially Indian story without a love ka tadka? The warm, tender workplace romance between two colleagues on Titan’s founding team, Gaurav Dhar and Megha Mhatre, serves as a portrait of a changing country that expresses love through apprehensive, awkward silences. While they love what they do at work, it is also love that binds them together against all odds.
Yesteryear Hindi film music is the glue the makers use to ensure seamless transitions between various events in the story and create nostalgia for another era, albeit indulgently. At times, it feels like an overdone effort to minimise monotony and sustain the show’s breezy, free-flowing and playful momentum.
Every major decision in Titan’s journey of invention and reinvention is backed by a personal event or a backstory, which feels over-explained and nearly undermines instinctive decision-making. Like many stories from the past, there is excessive attachment to the subject, sentimentalising and romanticising every aspect of Titan’s journey. You only hope the employees are not compared to soldiers fighting on battlefields.
The light, old-school storytelling works like a charm in the early episodes. However, as the initial enthusiasm of brand-building tapers off, every small and major setback is inflated to gargantuan proportions. The dramatic dialogue surrounding Titan’s failure in the European market, such as Titan didn’t fail in Europe; it was defeated, feels like the work of a project manager trying too hard to impress his boss.
While Titan may be a new baby of the Tatas, words like trust, legacy and endurance are squeezed into every other sequence to reinforce its heritage. Typical human follies within the core team are expanded into melodramatic episodes, and the soothsayer-like gyaan from JRD Tata becomes a tad difficult to tolerate, even if Naseeruddin Shah is masterful at portraying a gentle man with big dreams.
Make no mistake, Made in India explores several intriguing details and pain points involved in establishing a brand in the country across multiple decades, which is one of the show’s greatest strengths. Yet, you wish you could see more of JRD Tata’s quiet moments with Thelma, or instances where Desai’s football-obsessed son misses his father’s presence at home, or moments where Akash spends time with his father.
Made in India: Titan Story is a rare and effective show that blends the story of a brand with personal stories, nostalgia and patriotism. It would have been even more impactful had it been less sentimental and more objective in its treatment.
Music and Other Departments?
The background score by Abhishek Nailwal gives the show the wings it needs to soar, though the indulgent use of old Hindi songs dents the overall impact to an extent. The sepia-tinted frames, intricate set designs, costumes and hairstyles successfully recreate the aesthetic of India in the 1980s and early 1990s.
However, the excessive focus on visual detailing can be distracting, affecting the emotional impact on a handful of occasions. The stuffy writing, especially in Episodes 4 and 5, is difficult to digest. The nearly six-hour narrative allows the team to pack in a wealth of details and pop-culture references, though not all of them land effectively.
Highlights?
Top-notch casting, performances
Technical precision, detailing
The idea of a period business show with a patriotic touch
Drawbacks?
Excessive use of old Hindi film music
Overly sentimental in its treatment at times, lacks objectivity
Brand overtakes the emotion in many parts
Did I Enjoy It?
Mostly, Yes
Will You Recommend It?
Certainly, but be prepared for a slight overdose of Titan nostalgia.
Made in India Titan Story Amazon MX player Series Reviewed by M9 News
