Director Robbie Grewal is enjoying the acclaim coming his way for Made In India: The Titan Story. However bringing the series to screens was anything but straightforward. The show, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Jim Sarbh, struggled to find a streaming home despite its compelling subject, moving between platforms before eventually landing at Amazon MX Player.

Looking back, Grewal says the project survived because everyone involved believed in it. “Getting a series made is always a challenge. We had conviction in our show, and there were a lot of people who shared that belief. Whether it was producers or the team at the OTT platform, they all backed it wholeheartedly. When the conviction is holistically so strong, chances of going wrong are much less. The biggest risk today for a maker is not to tell a story honestly. Even if you do an algorithm-based show, be honest to it. Whichever lens you look at a story from, that’s the key for a show to work.”

Grewal also believes streaming platforms have become increasingly reliant on proven formulas, particularly in the crime genre. “When Sacred Games came, it was fantastic. What’s happening now is that people are following a similar template because it has worked before. That’s actually the death of a story. You create art not by imitation, but by imagination.”

One of the biggest milestone for the director was directing Shah, a long-held ambition. “For any filmmaker, he would be among the actors you dream of working with. It’s a dream for me too. Naseer saab keeps you on your toes. He’s so good at his craft that if you’re not at your best, you’ll be in trouble.”

The show’s creators were granted unprecedented permission to film inside the inner sanctums of Tata, including the historic Bombay House, and the Titan factory in Hosur

Before filming the series, Robbie Grewal spent time with members of the Titan employees to better understand the people behind the company. He shared, “What the characters play on screen is an embodiment of what they are in real life. They’re happy. And to be happy in today’s times is not easy, but they’re genuinely happy. That’s the spirit we tried to put across in our telling.”