It's a busy morning at Swiss Timepieces, the oldest watch seller in Kathmandu. Staff are making tea and are laying out watches for a handful of customers in the bright showroom on Durbar Marg, under the watchful eye of family patriarch Shanmbhu Dayal Jhunjhunwala. Dressed in a white kurta, he proudly wears the same watch every day, a Rolex President. His grandson Ankur, wearing Western-style shirt and pants, is attending a customer looking at Grand Seiko timepieces. Ankur, a passionate watch collector, usually opts for a German A. Lange & Söhne or a Dutch Grönefeld.
Shanmbhu Dayal Jhunjhunwala (seated) and his grandson Ankur Jhunjhunwala, at their shop, Swiss Timepieces, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Photo: Tom Vater
Outside the city is pulsating. Traffic on this broad avenue lined with Western brand outlets like The Body Shop, Nike and KFC, the Nepali capital's equivalent to Madison Avenue, is dense, a slightly unruly melange of cars and motorbikes whistled into order by a multitude of traffic police.
Beyond Durbar Marg, the city spills outward in a chaos of narrow alleys and ancient courtyards, where the smell of frying momos and burning incense mixes with diesel fumes. Temples rise between concrete buildings, their tiered pagoda roofs strung with prayer flags that flap in the breeze, while commuters, tourists, ascetics in saffron robes and schoolchildren in neat blue uniforms move along the same cracked pavements.
On a clear morning, the Himalayas float on the horizon like a half-remembered dream, their snow-capped peaks rising above the forested hillside ridges that frame the Kathmandu valley. Kathmandu is a city caught between worlds, medieval and modern, sacred and commercial, a contradiction that's wholly organic.
C&C: You opened your first shop in 1962. What was the watch trade in Kathmandu like then?
SDJ: We are a Marwari family from Kolkata, and in 1962, I established our first watch shop in Kathmandu during the reign of King Mahendra. [Marwaris are a merchant community originally from the Marwar and Shekhawati areas of Rajasthan who migrated east in large numbers through the nineteenth century, with Kolkata as the largest destination.] It wasn't just our family's first venture—it was the first watch shop of its kind in the Nepali capital. We opened on New Road, Indra Chowk, which became a landmark for watch buyers.
C&C: Where were the watches coming from, and who was buying them?
SDJ: I was the first to import manual winding watches from Hong Kong. I would fly there several times a month and import 100 or 200 pieces at a time. The exchange rate was 8 Nepali rupees to one US dollar. We would buy a watch for 42 rupees wholesale and sell it for 49 rupees to Indian traders from Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata who came across the border. [At his exchange rate that came to $5.25, or about five weeks' income in a country where the average person earned $55 a year. The same share of a Nepali income today would be around $150.]
At the time, it was impossible to import foreign watches directly from Hong Kong into India at a reasonable price. These traders traveled great distances to purchase from us because they knew we offered quality goods at fair prices. We also supplied watches that made their way to Tibet, crossing the Himalayas through ancient trade routes.
C&C: You were buying Omega in Hong Kong from 1968, but selling it unofficially. How did you become the brand's authorized dealer in Nepal?
Durbar Square, Kathmandu Ancient temples. Photo: Martjin Vonk
SDJ: I started buying Omega watches in Hong Kong from 1968. I told Omega in Switzerland, sent them photos and sales records of watches I had sold. Eventually, after more than a decade, I became the authorized watchseller for Omega in Nepal. From the early 1980s onwards, I would travel to the Omega works in Switzerland every year and attend the main Swiss watch fair. We also became the official sellers for Hermès, Cartier, Movado, Chopard and the West End Watch Company.
C&C: India spent decades under the Licence Raj, with import quotas and tariffs that kept foreign watches expensive, which is what sent those traders to you. In 1991, facing a balance of payments crisis, Narasimha Rao's government devalued the rupee, began dismantling the licensing system and opened the country to imports. What did that do to your business?
SDJ: The business landscape transformed. Liberalization had a massive ripple effect. Suddenly, there was more competition, more brands, and easier access to global markets across the subcontinent. The traders from India stopped coming to Kathmandu. But we had already established a reputation for reliability and quality that no amount of new competition could erase.
C&C: How did you adapt?
SDJ: We adapted by strengthening our relationships with long-time suppliers. Seiko, Citizen, and Ricoh were our mainstays, and we always sourced them officially from Hong Kong. The import tax was only 5%, which helped, but it was our reputation and our deep roots in the community that truly carried us through.
C&C: Did your customers and clients change or grow?
SDJ: People would come from all over Nepal just to see our collection. Traders also came from Tibet as western watches were highly taxed in China. What's more, Tibetans did not trust the Chinese and preferred doing business with Nepalese. They came not just for the watches, but also bought silver, handicrafts, alcohol and perfume.
C&C: And the Tibetan trade today?
A busy city street filled with lots of traffic. Photo: Tomasz Brengos
SDJ: The Tibetan community remains our main customer pool. They buy the mass market watches we sell exclusively today—Titoni and West End. I forged this relationship and it has remained incredibly strong, despite the Chinese economy fluctuating. When Tibetan families first began settling in Nepal in the 1950s, they came to us for their watch needs. We treated them with respect and provided them with quality timepieces they could rely on.
C&C: It has been almost a decade since Ankur Jhunjhunwala, Shambhu Dayal's grandson, took over in 2017. What did the younger Jhunjhunwala change?
AJ: I started going to Switzerland every year, to Basel or Zürich to the big watch fair. I also took the opportunity to visit watch factories of the companies we represented. But we had some difficulties becoming the sole official seller for some brands because Nepal is a very small market. I decided to pivot the business towards niche watch makers and tap into the Nepalese collectors' market. That's because I am a watch collector myself. It's not just a business for me, it's a passion. And that makes us different from any other retailer in Nepal. I decided to turn away from the mass market and began to build different relationships with local collectors.
C&C: The GPHG Academy runs to roughly 1,000 members worldwide. They put watches forward for the competition, choose the nominees and vote on the winners, who are announced in Geneva each November. How did your membership come about?
AJ: I joined GPHG, the Swiss watch academy that hosts the Oscars of watch making, in 2024. Friends, including watch makers and journalists, recommended me. I vote on which watches win the prizes. I am the only Nepali member.
C&C: What does the shop carry now?
AJ: Broadly speaking, we represent several different ranges of watches—at the top end it's Grand Seiko, Graham, Carl F. Bucherer and Speake Marin. Among high end brands, we offer NOMOS Glashütte, Oris, Sinn, Frederique Constant, Titoni and Luminox. And finally, we also sell some niche brands like Sherpa Watches, Hercules, Seven Friday, Ciga Design. These are the kinds of watches Nepali collectors can afford.
C&C: And what do you collect yourself?
AJ: The kind of watches I collect privately are made by small independent watch makers who produce perhaps 20 or 100 watches a year. They are my personal passion. They offer incredible craftsmanship and are for buyers who are bored with the big brands. The market for these is limited in Nepal.
