GUESS Watches taps Tamannaah Bhatia as India brand ambassado

MUMBAI: GUESS has found its Indian watches ambassador, and the choice is anything but safe. Tamannaah Bhatia, actor, entrepreneur and one of the country’s most watched style icons, has been named the new face of GUESS Watches, unveiled at an exclusive launch event in Mumbai that brought together the brand’s biggest names to mark what GUESS is calling a bold new moment for the category. This is not a quiet product placement. It is a full repositioning bet, and Bhatia is the one carrying it.

The logic is not hard to follow. GUESS Watches has spent over forty years building a reputation for bold, trend-driven timepieces with what the brand itself describes as a young, sexy and adventurous spirit. What it needed in India was a face that could translate that DNA into local cultural currency without losing an ounce of edge. Bhatia, by the brand’s own framing, embodies the so-called GUESS Girl: effortless, glamorous, bold and unapologetically confident, the kind of presence that owns a room the moment she walks into it. That is marketing language, certainly, but it is not an unreasonable read of her public persona.

Paul Marciano, GUESS’s co-founder and chief creative officer, did not hold back on enthusiasm, calling Bhatia a natural fit for a category where fashion and self-expression sit at the heart of every design, and confirming she will front the brand’s FW26 watches collection. Bhatia’s own comment leaned into the same territory, describing GUESS Watches as accessories built to make a statement rather than blend in, and framing the partnership as a chance to bring her own style into the GUESS world.

The more interesting voice, strategically speaking, belongs to Deepak Chhabra, managing director of Timex Group India, which handles GUESS Watches in the market. Chhabra pitched the partnership as an opportunity to deepen the brand’s fashion credentials in India and connect with a new generation of consumers, language that signals this is less about a single campaign and more about repositioning GUESS Watches for a market where fashion watches compete as much on cultural relevance as on craftsmanship. Bhatia’s Instagram following and pan-India star power give the brand exactly the kind of reach that a traditional watch campaign, built around specifications and heritage, simply cannot buy.

Bhatia debuts in her first GUESS campaign this September, fronting the FW26 collection across advertising, social platforms and consumer experiences. For a category that has often struggled to make fashion watches feel essential rather than optional in India’s crowded accessories market, tying the brand to one of the country’s most bankable style icons is a shrewd, well-timed move. If the partnership lands the way GUESS clearly hopes it will, this will not be the last headline Bhatia generates for the brand.