Prerna Gupta on Making World-Class Watches in India

India has admired fine watchmaking for decades, but building a globally credible watch brand demands more than admiration—it requires conviction, patience, and precision. In this conversation, Prerna Gupta, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Rotoris, explains why the brand chose engineering discipline over nostalgia, and how designing for the future—not the past—is reshaping India’s role in high-precision luxury manufacturing.

India has admired great watches for decades...what changed now that made building one finally feel possible?

India has always admired great watches, but admiration alone doesn’t translate into manufacturing excellence. What has changed today is a combination of mindset and maturity. Until now, very few founders were willing to go deep into the details of watchmaking or commit the patient capital required to build a truly purpose driven brand. At Rotoris, we chose to take that risk, to invest time in knowledge transfer, form the right global partnerships, and obsess over every component and process. That daring spirit, coupled with access to expertise that was once out of reach, is what finally makes building a “world class” Indian watch brand feel possible.

With legacy dominating global horology, how does Rotoris earn credibility without centuries of history behind it?

It’s true, we don’t come with centuries of legacy. But new age consumers connect less with where a brand comes from and more with what it stands for. Instead of building stories around the past, Rotoris is focused on where we’re headed. We’re not trying to speak about the last hundred years of horology; we’re designing for the next hundred. While legacy watch brands focus on precision in telling the time, Rotoris goes a step further it tells your time. Our watches are built for men who see themselves as forward looking, progressive, and unapologetically modern. A man who wears a Rotoris isn’t defined by history; he’s defined by the future.

Why did you choose to lead with engineering discipline rather than nostalgia or royal storytelling?

Rotoris is absolutely an emotion led brand,but the emotion we’re building is forward looking, not backward looking. Nostalgia borrows meaning from the past. Royal storytelling asks you to buy into someone else’s legacy. We’re more interested in the person you’re becoming than the history you’re inheriting. Engineering is how we earn the right to that emotional connection. Precision, mechanical integrity, Swiss movements, these aren’t the story, they’re the credibility. They prove we’re serious before we ask you to believe in something bigger. We’re building our own mythology, not borrowing from the past. But you have to earn emotion. Engineering is how we earn it.

What does “Swiss-level specification” mean in practice for an Indian-made brand, and where is the real innovation happening?

Swiss-level specification, in practice, means uncompromising standards precision tolerances, material quality, finishing, durability, and consistency. Switzerland mastered the art of watchmaking a century ago, just as other countries mastered different manufacturing disciplines: Germany in automotive engineering, Japan in electronics and precision manufacturing, and Italy in industrial design and craftsmanship. Over time, knowledge, tooling, and processes have travelled across borders.

In today’s world, technical expertise is no longer limited by geography. India is fully capable of producing watches with the same levels of precision and quality, it has the talent, the infrastructure, and the engineering depth. What it traditionally lacked was the ‘Swiss’ stamp, for which consumers often pay an exceptional price. With Rotoris, the innovation lies in breaking that equation. We focus on delivering meticulous design, engineering, and craftsmanship without passing on premiums that are attached not to the product itself, but to legacy branding. The result is a watch that offers global standards of quality, while remaining far more honest in value.

How do you convince global collectors that an Indian watch deserves space alongside established luxury names?

We don’t actively try to convince global collectors and that’s a deliberate choice. Rotoris isn’t designed as a collectible to be bought and stored away; it’s built for aspiring men who are in the process of becoming more. A Rotoris is meant to be worn, lived with, and experienced. It’s both a machine and a piece of art that sits on your wrist, reminding you every day of who you are and where you’re headed.

Over time, as the men who wear Rotoris today grow into the leaders of tomorrow with Rotoris as their partner in time the brand will naturally earn its place alongside established names. That’s when Rotoris develops something no brand can manufacture overnight: a past, a present, and a future. And that is when true admiration follows

If Rotoris succeeds, what does that unlock for India’s future in high-precision luxury manufacturing?

If Rotoris succeeds, it unlocks something far bigger than one brand, it unlocks confidence. Confidence for Indian founders, manufacturing led businesses, and legacy business houses to believe that this could be high precision engineering built in India and sold to the world. We’re already seeing promising signs across categories with we’re already seeing promising signs across categories with brands like Nappa Dori in leather, Gully Labs in footwear, Jaipur Rugs in hand-crafted heritage, and Titan’s higher-end horology initiatives showing that global quality manufacturing is possible here.

Rotoris’ success would help accelerate this belief system. It opens doors for more Indian brands to think globally from day one, invest in engineering and craftsmanship, and shed the notion that thoughtful construction must come from a foreign pin code. Over time, this leads to greater global acceptance of Indian design rigour as a category of its own