HMT was India's largest watchmaker — the government shut it down after decades of losses

HMT (Hindustan Machine Tools) was founded in 1953 as a state-owned machine tools manufacturer. In 1961, it added a watch division in collaboration with Citizen Watch of Japan, with the first batch released by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. HMT watches became a household name in India — affordable, reliable, and the only choice for most Indians. During the 1970s and 1980s, HMT was the largest supplier of wrist watches in the country.

The decline began in the 1980s when Titan, a joint venture between the Tata Group and the Tamil Nadu government, launched quartz watches with modern designs and aggressive marketing. HMT's mechanical watches, unchanged for decades, could not compete. The company's state-owned structure made it slow to respond: decision-making was bureaucratic, labor unions blocked modernization efforts, and the company could not lay off workers or close unprofitable units.

By 2012-13, the numbers were catastrophic: HMT's watch division reported losses of ₹242 crore (US$35M) on revenue of just ₹11 crore (US$1.6M) — a negative margin of 2,200%. Titan's watch business, in the same year, posted sales of ₹1,675 crore. The government began phasing out the watch division in September 2014. HMT Watches Ltd and HMT Chinar Watches Ltd were officially closed in September 2016. The company's website was taken down by late 2016.

The closure of HMT Watches marked the end of an era — a state-owned watchmaker that had once employed thousands and produced millions of watches a year was wiped out by competition from a single private-sector rival. The government's bailout attempts failed because the underlying problems were structural: HMT could not compete on product, price, or marketing, and the state-owned model prevented the restructuring that might have saved it.