Jim Sarbh, Naseeruddin Shah, and the untold story of how India got its most iconic watch brand

Before the Titan was a titan, it was a risk nobody wanted to take.

India in the pre-liberalisation era was not a country known for building world-class consumer brands from scratch. Imports dominated, ambition was rationed, and the idea of an Indian watch company competing on design and quality sounded, to most ears, like a fantasy. Which is exactly what makes the story of Titan so worth telling, and exactly why Amazon MX Player's upcoming six-part series Made in India: A Titan Story arrives with the kind of weight that most business dramas only pretend to have.

The series premieres on June 3, 2026, and streams on Amazon MX Player.

What the show is actually about

At the centre of the story is Xerxes Desai, the quietly rebellious businessman who bet his career on the belief that India could design and manufacture something the world would respect. Written by Karan Vyas and directed by Robbie Grewal, the series is adapted from Vinay Kamath's book Titan: India's Most Successful Consumer Brand, and traces the brand's unlikely rise through setbacks, institutional resistance, and the particular madness of trying to build something genuinely new in a country that had not yet decided to believe in itself.

The cast doing the heavy lifting

Naseeruddin Shah plays JRD Tata and by his own account, what drew him to the role was not the legend but the man underneath it. The quiet confidence, the ability to back people before they had results to show, the instinct to nurture potential rather than just reward achievement. Jim Sarbh plays Xerxes Desai and describes him as someone unafraid to imagine what did not yet exist, a man driven by instinct and persistence long before either quality produced visible returns. Rounding out the ensemble are Vaibhav Tatwawadi, Namita Dubey, Lakshvir Saran, and Kaveri Seth in pivotal roles across the six episodes.

Why this story lands differently right now

There is a version of this series that could have been a glossy corporate tribute, all slow motion boardroom victories and swelling background score. Made in India: A Titan Story appears to be going somewhere more honest than that. The trailer leans into the uncertainty, the resistance, the gap between having a vision and convincing anyone else it is worth following. In a media landscape full of founder mythology, a story that actually sits inside the doubt is a harder and more interesting thing to watch.

The streaming context worth noting

Amazon MX Player positioning this as a free stream is not a small decision. It means the series is built to reach the widest possible Indian audience rather than sit behind a paywall as prestige content for subscribers who already converted. For a story explicitly tied to the idea of building something for the country rather than for a narrow market, that distribution choice has a logic to it that the show itself would probably appreciate.

Produced by Almighty Motion Pictures, Made in India: A Titan Story is the kind of project that reminds you that the most compelling business stories are never really about business. They are about the specific people who refused to accept that an idea was too ambitious for the room they were standing in. Titan was one of those ideas. Whether the show lives up to it, audiences will find out on June 3.