The Story of HMT Watches
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“Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge ……” declared our beloved Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehruji at the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947, as India attained independence. This led to a phase of vigorous initiatives in agriculture, industry, infrastructure and other such core sectors to make independent India self-reliant.
HMT was entrusted with the vital task of building machine tools and in 1953 the first Machine tool factory was set up in Bangalore.
Panditji’s vision to bring in a sense of time-consciousness among the Indians, and his belief that India was capable of manufacturing precision components generated the pace for setting up a watch manufacturing unit within the country. In 1961, the Government of India entrusted the job to HMT due to its capability, name and fame amongst the public sectors.
HMT set up a watch manufacturing Unit in Bangalore in collaboration with M/s Citizen Watch Co., Japan in 1961. As the first manufacturer of Wrist watches in the country, HMT successfully absorbed the totally new precision manufacturing technology for mass production and assembly of micro-sized components.
Popularity and demand of watches was increasing which led the company to expand its capacity. Accordingly, the expansion was done as mentioned below.
In 1972, Watch factory II was set up alongside the Bangalore Factory to manufacture Automatic Day Date Watches with Japanese Technology.
Watch factory III was set up at Srinagar in 1972 with the entire Technical Knowhow from HMT engineers.
In 1975, Watch factory at Bangalore was further expanded to manufacture Main Spring, Hair spring and Shock absorber components. By this, HMT totally acquired the technology of Mechanical Watch making. In the year 2000, HMT Watch Business group was re-structured as HMT Watches Limited (a Wholly Owned Subsidiary of HMT Limited).
