The Hindi drama Made in India: A Titan Story has found a warm reception since its June 3, 2026 release, and the film's composer Abhishek Nailwal says the response has confirmed something he sensed while the project was still being assembled - that its emotional core would reach audiences before any technical flourish did. In an exclusive conversation with Hindi Movie Buzz, Nailwal spoke about the music of the Robby Grewal-directed film and why the story of an Indian watchmaker taking on entrenched global rivals strikes such a resonant chord.

"The emotion is already playing out on screen before the music even arrives, and that is the greatest gift a composer can be handed," Nailwal told Hindi Movie Buzz. "My work was to listen to what the story was already saying and give it a voice, not to drown it out." He described the score as built around restraint, shaped by the film's central figure, Xerxes Desai, and the quiet stubbornness of the team around him.

The film stars Jim Sarbh as Xerxes Desai, the determined Indian businessman at its center, with Naseeruddin Shah essaying the role of JRD Tata. The supporting ensemble includes Vaibhav Tatwawadi as Akash Bansal, Lakshvir Saran as Gaurav Dhar, Kaveri Seth as Megha Mhatre, Namita Dubey as Rajini Desai, Joy Sengupta as SK Gopalan and Ashwath Bhatt as Shankar Manoharan. Grewal directs from a story that follows a market dominated by smuggling and foreign labels, and a man who chooses to build a world-class watch from the ground up rather than import one.

An Emotional Score for a Story of Persistence

Nailwal suggested that the narrative's themes of rejection, failure and public humiliation demanded a soundtrack that never overplayed its hand. "The characters spend much of the film being told that what they are attempting is impossible," he said. "If the music had shouted their triumph, the struggle would have felt cheap. The silence before the build, the pause after a setback - those matter more than the crescendos."

He added that the creative team was conscious of the weight of the subject and approached the material with a sense of responsibility. "There is a moment in the film where national pride is not a slogan but a feeling in a room," Nailwal told Hindi Movie Buzz. "That is the moment I was composing for from the first day."

Critics and Audiences Align

The film's critical reception has been exceptionally strong. TMDb currently shows a rating of 9.286/10, while IMDb records 8.5/10 - figures that place Made in India: A Titan Story among the best-reviewed Hindi releases of the year. According to the available ratings, the audience response has matched the critical consensus, a pairing that is far from guaranteed for a period drama built around a business story.

Nailwal credited that alignment to the filmmakers' refusal to treat the material as a conventional corporate saga. "Audiences forgive a lot of things, but they do not forgive being lectured to," he said. "We tried to make a film about people first and a company second, and I think viewers recognized that."

A Story Rooted in Hindi Cinema

Made in India: A Titan Story is a Hindi-language Bollywood production, and Nailwal framed its success as part of a broader appetite among Indian viewers for dramas drawn from their own recent history. The film's backdrop - a domestic market flooded with smuggled goods and foreign prestige brands, and a homegrown team determined to compete - gives it a specificity that reviewers have cited as one of its strengths.

The composer was careful not to make predictions about the film's commercial run but acknowledged the warmth of the reaction so far. "When people tell you they thought about their own parents' struggles while watching, you know the film has gone beyond its subject," he said.

Now in its fifth month of release, the drama continues to draw commentary online, with discussion centered on the performances of Sarbh and Shah as well as the score's understated character. For Nailwal, that conversation is the point. "The film asks whether an Indian team can build something the world respects," he said. "The answer on the screen is yes, and the audience seems to be answering the same way."

Source: Filmibeat