Harish Bhat, Titan's COO is Moving Out

Titan Industries, the Rs 6,700 cr, watches and jewellery maker is set for a management reshuffle. Harish Bhat, COO, watches division, is moving out of his role at the Bangalore-based company. H G Raghunath, head of manufacturing for watches, will replace him. In another significant development, L R Natarajan, chief manufacturing officer of jewellery, has been promoted to take as COO, new business development.

Harish, an IIM A alumni and a member of the Tata Administrative Service, heads the Rs. 1200 cr watches business, which includes brands like Titan, Sonata, Xyls and Fastrack and has a 65 percent market share in the organized watch market.

There was no confirmation from Titan on the management changes. Text messages and email sent to MD Bhaskar Bhat remained unanswered.

Word is that Bhat is leaving to write a book on the Tata group. The book is supposed to be a sending off present for Ratan Tata who is set to retire as head of Tata Sons on December 2012.

Titan is the fifth most valuable company in the Tata group and has seen a major turnaround in the last five years.

Titan is at an inflection point today. The company, which was struggling for survival some years back is today flushed with cash and is looking for its next big bet. Bhaskar, who took over as MD in 2002, has led a turnaround, cutting back losses, improving profitability and retiring most of the company’s debt. The company last year generated operating cash flow of Rs. 1,025 cr and Bhaskar is looking for new business ideas, which will take the company beyond the $3 bn target it has set for itself in 2014-2015.

Many people close to the company had believed that Harish along with CK Venkataraman, COO, Jewellery division would be the two people spearheading this next phase of growth at Titan.

Given Titan’s culture of picking professional managers from within, Harish and Venkat (as Venkataraman is called inside the company) were widely tipped to be Bhaskar Bhat’s successors.

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