The Weight of Almost Nothing: Squircle Titanium, a Titan Craftsmanship Story

In 1997, two engineers strode up to the sixth floor of Titan's Bangalore headquarters with a request that bordered on audacity. BG Dwarakanath and Subramanya Bhat asked Managing Director Xerxes Desai to let them build a movement only 1.15 mm thick, roughly the depth of a credit card. The unshaken response to that was a “yes”.

The watch that was to be born took almost four years to finally make itself known. It arrived in 2002 at 3.5 mm, slimmer than anything on the market at that time. Earlier attempts at slim watchmaking in India had faltered on reliability and water resistance while Edge settled both questions.

What followed was a patient study of materials. A titanium skeleton came in 2012, a ceramic edition in 2016 and a slim mechanical watch in 2020. In 2024, the UltraSlim and the Squircle were shortlisted for the Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève, the first time an Indian brand had made it to the list.

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Where Contour Meets Composure 

The recently launched Squircle Titanium, available in matte and gloss finishes, descends from that lineage. The limited-edition watch’s geometry holds the discipline of a square and the ease of a circle, and here it is rendered, for the first time, in Grade 5 titanium. The case, 38.10 by 45 mm, flows into an integrated bracelet cut from the same metal, so the profile reads as one unbroken line from case to wrist.

The material complements the temperament of the design. It is roughly 40 percent lighter than stainless steel, strong, resistant to corrosion and gentle on sensitive skin. At 4.85 mm thick, the watch sits on the wrist with the discretion of a well-tailored cuff.

Both finishes offer two distinctive moods. The matte edition pairs a subdued titanium case and bracelet with a two-tone matte dial. The gloss edition polishes those surfaces and places a two-tone mirror dial beneath sapphire crystal, so light travels across it with greater assertion. Both keep the dial spare, with baton hands and stick indices at 12 and 6. Nothing competes with the metal or the form.

Inside beats the Edge Calibre T9081, Titan's in-house stepper quartz movement. It measures 1.15 mm, the figure Dwarakanath and Bhat proposed nearly three decades ago. Because Titan controls the movement, the case can be drawn around the calibre rather than the calibre being squeezed into a case. That relationship is what allows the watch to reach 4.85 mm without thinness becoming its only ambition. Water resistance is rated at 3 ATM.

Twenty-nine years on, the number 1.15 has held steady. What surrounds it keeps changing, and the Squircle Titanium shows how far a single measurement can travel.

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