Watchmaker Fossil launches 7 new products in India

The US-based luxury watchmaker Fossil Group Monday expanded the range of smartwatches in India with the launch of seven products across its six brands. The company -- whose portfolio of six brands in India include Fossil, Michael Kors, Skagen, Emporio Armani, Armani Exchange and Diesel -- also plans to open 2-3 Fossil outlets in the calendar year 2019 to expand its footprint in the country.

"India is one of the fastest growing markets for Fossil...while in India there is a large market for traditional watches...but we see a great opportunity in adding on the connect watch market to our business...we expect growth in the connected devices segment to be much much higher," Fossil India Managing Director Johnson Verghese told PTI.

In future, the company expects every watch will be a connected watch (smartwatch) in some form, he said. Fossil, which has a single brand retail licence, at present operates 18 outlets in India. It also has around 600 points of sales such as department stores, local chains, duty-free, e-commerce platforms.

"India is one of the Fossil's growth markets and we are ready to open stores. Opening stores depend on factors such as commercial viability... We are looking at opening 2-3 Fossil stores in India in 2019," he added. Fossil Group forayed into Indian wearable device market in 2016.

The seven products launched by the company on Monday are powered with Wear OS by Google and the Qualcomm Snapdragon Wear 2100 platform. The newly launched products offer features like heart-rate tracking, untethered GPS and swim-proof functionality and they are in the range of Rs 19,995 and Rs 33,995.