About HMT
“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 of 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 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, 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, 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 at 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. This tryst with ‘firsts’ continued and led to launch of India’s first Automatic Day-Date watch , first Quartz watch , first Braille watch, first Ana-Digi watch and so on.
The first batch of Hand Wound Wrist Watches was released by the Hon’ble Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Popularity and demand for HMT watches was increasing day by day. This led the company to expand its capacity. In 1972, Watch factory II was set up alongside the first factory in Bangalore to manufacture Automatic Day Date Watches with Japanese Technology.
Watch factory III was set up at Srinagar in 1972 with the entire Technical Know how from HMT engineers.
In 1975, Watch factory at Bangalore was further expanded to manufacture Main Spring, Hair spring and Shock absorber components. With this HMT completely acquired the technology of Mechanical Watch making, producing 100% components in house.
Later on HMT set up manufacturing facility to produce 2 million watch components sets at Tumkur and Ranibagh in the year 1978 and 1985 respectively and watches were assembled at various assembly units spread over the country. This was done with the objective of dispersal of Industry and creation of employment besides catering to the demand for the product which got accepted very well in the market. In line with the market trend , Watch factory at Tumkur was partially converted to manufacture Quartz Analog Watches in collaboration with M/S Citizen Watch Co, Japan. To cater to the Niche market, a specialized watch case manufacturing facility was set up at Bangalore in 1983.The project was implemented with in-house expertise, without any foreign collaboration .
Since 1985 , HMT has been actively involved in making Floral Clocks, Solar Clocks, International Clocks, Master-Slave clocks and Tower Clocks. The Garden clock at Bangalore thrills thousands of visitors everyday.
HMT Watches, having over 100 million satisfied customers, is a household name in the country and enjoys a good Brand Equity.
