Bijou Kurien, 44, is a man of many roles. Not only is he the chief operating officer (watches) at Titan Industries, he is also president of the Horological Federation of India, chairman for the southern region of the Indian Society of Advertisers, and president of the XLRI Alumni Association, Bangalore Chapter. He’s always been that way ? a person with several irons in the fire. “To a large extent, your early experiences and learning shape your character,” says Kurien. “They make up your foundation.”

Kurien did his schooling from St Clarence and spent his college years at St Joseph’s, Bangalore. Everyone expected him to go for medicine or engineering, but he opted for physics and mathematics instead. He did that because numbers fascinated him. Again, for that very reason, everybody expected him to become a bean counter or a numbers man of some sort. Kurien took a different route.

It was in college that Kurien displayed his wide-spectrum mindset. While studying physics and mathematics, he got involved in extra-curricular activities. “I was an active participant in sports like badminton and cricket. I was also a pro at dumb charades and organising college festivals, which incidentally, landed me a cultural secretary post and later a general secretary,” says Kurien.

All this broadened his horizon. And, when one of his professors advised him to study management, he took up the challenge. He gave the CAT and after getting calls from the Indian Institutes of Management (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) and XLRI, Jamshedpur, he chose the last. IIM was run of the mill, XLRI was different, he had thought.

After graduating in 1981, his first job was with Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) as a management trainee. The first 18 months were gruelling and he still remembers his first stint in the north. “I knew very little Hindi, having lived all my life in the south. But, courtesy Uttar Pradesh, I learnt both the job and the language.”

After training in Mumbai and Chennai, Kurien was posted in Chennai to oversee sales. He worked in various capacities till he was appointed head of the newly-launched prawn hatcheries division. “Though this position held a lot of challenges, I wasn’t keen to pursue a job which involved more of managing a scientific community. So I decided to move on,” says Kurien.

Around 1987, Titan was just about to be launched and someone suggested that he take a look at the company. Kurien says that he had doubts about the Tatas whose Tata Oil Mills had been left far behind by HLL in consumer marketing. But his encounters with some Tata veterans convinced him that a stint in an emerging watch company was worth a try. And, since then, his role at Titan has only grown.

Kurien has worked in various capacities like regional manager, marketing controller, vice-president (sales and marketing) and the current role of COO. Today, he handles the profit centre responsibility for the Rs 500-crore watch division in India and international markets.

Kurien believes in certain maxims. “Be democratic when it comes to listening to others, but be autocratic when it comes to taking decisions,” he says. “This is because participative decision-making often results in a who-will-take-the-decision kind of a situation.”

And, yes, he feels that it does not matter if one chases several goals. It is more important to chase them well. The various roles that he is performing also stem from his willingness to learn new things every day.

“A job does impart some learning, but there is a lot to be learnt from the outside world,” says Kurien. According to him, organisations that are not willing to relearn, reinvent and restructure will perish in the long run.

His biggest challenge in the watch business is to stay pre-eminent in the consumers’ mind as the most preferred accessory. With competition growing from international brands, he is ever adjusting the quality-price mix.

For a man who spent just seven years in HLL, he is going to complete two decades with Titan in 2007.

Is he going to explore other ventures too? “There is so much to be done in this sector itself. We have just diversified into eyewear and may branch out into other lifestyle accessories. We have also started a precision engineering operation that is of immense value to the engineering and automotive sectors. There are lots of opportunities for growth.” Clearly, the man is in no hurry to hang up his boots at Titan. His timepiece in the company is still ticking.

As told to Aparna Harish in Calcutta