Rotoris Is For The Man In Motion: Founders, Rotoris
Rotoris may only be a few months old but it has already created noise in the Indian watch landscape for aggressively pursuing its ambition of becoming more. The brand’s enterprising spirit comes through each of the five new watches (Manifesta, Monarch, Auriqua, Arvion and Astonia) and the zeal of its founders.
Launched earlier this year, Rotoris is co-founded by Aakash Anand, who scaled Bella Vita Perfumes into India’s largest fragrance company, serial entrepreneur Prerna Gupta, founding partners Anant Narula and Kunal Kapania, accompanied by the horological expertise of watchmaker Harman Wadhwa. GMT India sat down with the founders to discuss how the brand was conceptualised, what defines its pioneering spirit, and what consumers can expect from the brand in the coming months.
How did the brand come into being?
Aakash Anand (AA): Rotoris started with a question: why does India, one of the world’s largest watch markets, still look outward for premium timepieces? We saw a gap between mass-market domestic brands and European heritage houses priced at multiples of what the product justifies. The ambition was to build a design-led watch brand from India with global standard engineering, sapphire crystal, automatic and meca-quartz movements, surgical-grade steel, and to offer it at a price point that respects how ambitious professionals actually earn and spend. We assembled a team with deep experience in brand building, supply chain, and horology, including an Indian-trained watchmaker with formal Swiss education. Rotoris is the result of that conviction: that Indian craftsmanship can stand confidently on the global stage.
Who is the ideal Rotoris wearer?
AA: A Rotoris wearer is any man who knows he will be fundamentally further a year from now than he is today. Someone who is actively building, whether that is a company, a career, a creative practice. Rotoris is for the man in motion. The timepieces recognise where he is headed, not where he has been.
Prerna Gupta (PG): It’s anyone who has the drive to do more. There are people who, at the age of 20, have earned a life’s worth and head into retirement. Even then, if they want to do the next big thing, Rotoris is for them. Or you could be a 60 year old who has already achieved great things in life and yet wants to do more – Rotoris is for him too.
As a new brand, you don’t have the privilege of nostalgia and legacy, factors that count for a lot in horology. What, then, does Rotoris count as its strengths?
AA: Rotoris is not a brand that banks on a 200-year-old legacy of watchmaking. Instead, Rotoris is catering to the men who will be responsible for the next 200 years or even the next 2000 years to come. That’s the difference. We’re not saying – buy a Rotoris watch because we belong to a rich Swiss, German, or Japanese heritage. All we’re saying is if you believe you are the man who will impact the future of this world, wear Rotoris.
PG: We don’t have 200 years of heritage but we’re building our own world of Rotoris; our reliance on mythology is also rooted in this. We don’t just want to sell products to the consumer, we offer them a connection with the brand first via an emotion, be it through the Elevator Series that showcases the qualities of the ideal Rotoris man, or through the use of Ascendus, the bow and arrow carrying mythical creature that has the wisdom of a human and the strength of a bull. In fact, Ascendus has his own island, and patrons will get to experience more of it in the coming months.
What makes the Indian watch market unique? Where do you think Rotoris is placed within the industry?
PG: There is greater enthusiasm for watches in India now than ever before. The market is growing and in the right direction. It is no longer just seasoned collectors; a much broader audience is discovering mechanical watches and developing an appreciation for what goes into them. We are seeing people choose mechanical and meca-quartz timepieces alongside their digital devices, not as a replacement but as a different kind of relationship with time. That shift is what Rotoris is designed for.
AA: India has perhaps the most energetic watch market in the world right now. The enthusiasm is real and growing. What Rotoris brings to this is a design-led perspective: five collections, each inspired by extraordinary forms like superyachts, racing instruments, architecture, and semi-precious stones. We believe a timepiece should do more than tell the time. It should remind you, every time you glance at your wrist, of the journey you are on. That is the philosophy behind every Rotoris collection.
What influenced the decision to adopt an access-request ownership model? How has it been received so far?
AA: We don’t want the watches to be judged by their prices. We want them all judged on their unique appeal, the craftsmanship, and the materials used. Once somebody resonates with a particular watch, we want them to wait for it, to feel like they’ve earned it. And once the access is granted, the price should not feel like a barrier. In the end, it feels like a surprise instead.
PG: As we’re an experiences-forward brand, we’ve been trying to offer experiences at every point of the process. At every turn, we’re offering connections with the brand and the story that we’re attempting to tell.
Of the five new collections, which one have consumers seemed most enthusiastic about?
AA: Manifesta has been the outlier and has received the most attention though every single one of the watches has been quite admired. Each watch has a very different personality, so it ends up appealing to different sets of audiences.
PG: For instance, Auriqua speaks to a much younger audience, and was created keeping younger consumers in mind. Think 25-32 year olds who want to be more noticed than others; they want what they’re wearing to be noticed right when they walk into a room. Whereas, the uni-hand Arvion is ideal for those who want conversation starters but prefer something subtler. Meanwhile, Monarch, we’ve noticed, is being preferred by a slighter old audience who is wearing it on a daily basis. A few customers have even told us how they’re starting out on their journey of collecting watches, and have chosen the Monarch as their first watch of choice.
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Tell us more about the movements.
Harman Wadhwa: We have a product-led approach. Take, for instance, Monarch. We wanted it to have particular complications like the moonphase while keeping the price point in mind. So, we decided to go ahead with Seagull because it’s one of the largest manufacturers and has a production capacity that can meet our needs at the moment. The assembling unit is in New Delhi, where the Rotoris watches undergo a stringent checking and testing process under my guidance. Since we’re so product-led, if the occasion arises where a watch requires us to incorporate a Swiss calibre or a Japanese calibre, we’ll make that happen.
AA: We heard the feedback on our movement choices clearly and have acted on it. Future drops will feature Miyota, Seiko, Sellita or ETA calibres. We are a product-led brand, and if the community tells us they want a different standard, we listen and we move. That is the advantage of being young and agile.
The brand has an impressive number of illustrious friends and partners. Tell us more about this part of the Rotoris ecosystem.
AA: The friends and partners are those key opinion leaders who can actually help the Rotoris community in their journey of becoming more. It’s why the friends and partners you see on the list are people who have made it on their own, made it quickly, and are the ones who are actively helping others either through philanthropy or funding via some other initiatives.
PG: Rotoris is community-led and the friends and partners, who were our initial believers, are the right people to associate with and learn from in terms of fostering greater ambition and aspirations. The one thing common to all the men you see on our friends and partners list is that they all have achieved lofty aspirational goals that are a testament to their ambition.
To learn more about Rotoris and its ambitious foray into the world of watchmaking, pick up a copy of our latest issue, on stands now!
