TL;DR: ZEIT is a Bangladeshi watch brand established in 2025 as ZEIT Limited. Its watches are designed in Bangladesh and made by contract manufacturers in China. It began selling in January 2026, which it calls a soft launch. Founded by Zeeshan Khurshed Mazumder, who is also founder and CEO of BeshiDeshi, a marketplace for Bangladeshi artisan products, ZEIT targets the middle-market for watches with a price range of Tk 3,500 to Tk 7,000. Each of its watches comes with a 24-month warranty.
A watch is a relatively challenging product to build a new brand around. Phones tell time, smartwatches offer notifications, health tracking, and a growing list of digital functions, and established international watchmakers have spent decades, sometimes centuries, building reputations that a newcomer cannot easily replicate. ZEIT, a new Bangladeshi watch brand still preparing its formal launch, believes there is room for another name on the market.
ZEIT is designed in Dhaka and made by contract factories in China. It began selling in January 2026 in what the company calls a soft launch, and the first lot of its Chrono Legacy has already sold out. A formal launch is still to come.
The brand is worth a close look for several reasons. It has adopted a patient approach to building, through small experiments and customer feedback, for a middle of the market that cheap imports and expensive international names both leave open. And behind it is a founder who has already built a marketplace for Bangladeshi artisan products.
Founder Zeeshan Khurshed Mazumder is a serial entrepreneur and is the CEO of BeshiDeshi, the Bangladeshi artisan products marketplace. We have interviewed him several times at Future Startup. Before BeshiDeshi, he built and ran businesses in hospitality and other sectors. His experience with Bangladeshi products at BeshiDeshi appears to have influenced his thesis for ZEIT, which rests on a growing base of consumers who want to buy Bangladeshi brands.
Zeeshan explains: "Bangladesh has a huge young consumer base, and over the years we have seen people becoming much more confident about buying and supporting homegrown brands. We now have strong Bangladeshi brands across fashion, lifestyle, food, technology and many other categories. But when I looked at watches, I felt there was still a very interesting gap."
Zeeshan sees ZEIT's opening in the middle of the market, between cheap generic and replica watches and imported brands that cost too much for many buyers. A new class of customer sits there: students, young professionals and emerging middle-income buyers who, in his words, care about "originality, design, materials, movement, finishing, warranty and the story behind the brand."
ZEIT's target price range is Tk 3,500 to Tk 7,000.
The build follows a lean startup logic. ZEIT began with a small experiment: five PRIME variants and then the Chrono Legacy, put them in customers' hands and used what sold and what came back as feedback to decide what to make next. Zeeshan puts it this way: "With ZEIT, I am trying to build more patiently. We launched small, we're learning from actual sales, and we're improving the products as we go."
The designs are done in Dhaka. The watches are made by contract factories in China, and Zeeshan says so openly. ZEIT controls the specifications, sampling, and final approval, and he will not call the watches "Made in Bangladesh" until that is true. The formal launch waits for a set of signature designs and a retail network wide enough to carry them.
This profile draws on an email interview with Zeeshan, a fact sheet from ZEIT and our earlier interviews with him (2019, 2025 Part I and Part II). ZEIT kept units sold, revenue, growth, and channel mix confidential, so the figures here are the ones it chose to share.
Below we look at the gap ZEIT is trying to fill in the market, how a ZEIT watch is made, how the company learns from customers, how it sells, what it costs to run, where the company wants to go from here, and much more.
Broadly speaking, Bangladesh’s watch market can be divided into four layers.
At the bottom sit cheap generic watches, many of them sourced from China. The variety is huge, and the prices are low. Movement quality, finishing, warranty, and after-sales service change from shop to shop.
Above them sit replicas and clones of famous international brands. They give you the look of an expensive watch without the reliability or the brand behind it.
At the top are authorized retailers of international names. Those watches are authentic and come with a warranty. Import costs, duties, and exchange rates push the prices out of reach for a large share of buyers.
Zeeshan sees the middle as an opening. Students, young professionals, and the growing middle class want an original design, a decent movement, good finishing, and a warranty. They do not want to pay an international price for it. ZEIT's target range, tentatively for now, is Tk 3,500 to Tk 7,000, and that is the space it wants to own.
His thesis has three parts.
The first is a gap in choice. Buyers could pick a cheap generic watch, a fashion watch, a smartwatch, or an international brand. The last, he says, "can become quite expensive in Bangladesh and are not always easily available through reliable, authentic sources." The question he kept returning to was why the country could not have "a proper Bangladeshi watch brand" that people buy for the watch itself.
The second is about why anyone wears a watch now. "A watch today isn't really necessary for telling time," he says. "We have phones everywhere." A person who wears one anyway is saying something about themselves, so design and brand do more work than they did twenty years ago. Smartwatches helped. They got a younger generation used to wearing something on the wrist, and some of those buyers wear a smartwatch for exercise and a traditional watch for dinner. He sees watches turning into a wardrobe, which leaves room for a brand with several collections.
The third is the buyer. A young customer in Dhaka can see what people wear in London, Dubai or Tokyo, check the movement and compare prices on one screen. "Local brands are increasingly being judged against global standards, not simply against other local products," he says. That raises the bar for ZEIT.
That said, he is a realist. He does not think the tag "Bangladeshi" can carry the sale alone. People may buy the first ZEIT out of curiosity. As he puts it, "They will buy their second ZEIT only if the first one was good."
He is direct about what ZEIT cannot do. It cannot beat the cheapest watch on price or match a century of heritage.
The label he uses for the position ZEIT aims to occupy is affordable-premium. "We don't want to compete with the cheapest watch in the market, and we are not trying to pretend to be a Swiss luxury brand," he says.
Against a cheap import, ZEIT offers an original product with better materials and finishing, a warranty, and local service.
Against an international brand, it offers a design built around local tastes and budgets, and a company a customer can reach. "If there is an issue, ZEIT is here," he says. "If customers give us feedback, it can actually influence what we develop next."
He sees being a local company as the edge. "We are building from inside this market," he says, which means knowing wrist sizes, climate, gifting habits, purchasing power, and what kind of after-sales service people expect.
As we noted above, ZEIT is open about where the watches come from. Concepts and designs are developed in Bangladesh. Manufacturing happens at specialized contract factories in China, which have a very mature ecosystem for watch production. Movements and components come from established manufacturers.
Zeeshan describes the design process as working backwards. The team started with the customers it wanted to serve, young professionals and the younger generation, then settled the case shape and size, weight, dial, bracelet, materials, finishing, colors, and movement around the market, the climate, the lifestyle, and the price. A design team in Bangladesh did extensive research before developing the watches. "We didn't want ZEIT to become a business where we simply import ready-made watches and put our logo on them," he says.
A new ZEIT takes three to six months from idea to commercial production. The path runs like this.
The team first defines the buyer, the character of the watch, the price band, and how it should feel on the wrist. Designers then settle each element: case shape and size, dial layout, hands, markers, bezel, crown, bracelet or strap, weight, colors, finishing and movement. They even fix the placement and size of the logo.
Next comes technical feasibility. The team talks to factories about what can be built reliably at the target price. Designs often change here, because a drawing hides problems that production exposes.
Then sampling, which Zeeshan describes as probably one of the most important stages. ZEIT receives physical samples. The team wears them and checks fit, weight, comfort, case and bracelet finishing, dial alignment, coating and function. "Very rarely is the first sample the final product," he says. Notes go back to the factory, revisions follow, sometimes a second sample. Only then does ZEIT approve production.
Quality control comes after that. In watches, a rough bracelet edge, a patchy coating, a dial that sits a fraction off, or a crown that feels cheap changes how the whole product is judged. ZEIT tightens its QC standards with each production cycle, and Zeeshan calls it "one of our biggest learning areas." He will not trade it for speed. "I would rather delay a product or correct an issue than put something into the market that doesn't represent the standard we want for ZEIT."
ZEIT controls the concept, research, design, specifications, component and movement requirements, sampling, revisions, quality expectations, branding, packaging and final approval. The factory builds.
Zeeshan will not call ZEIT watches "Made in Bangladesh" yet. His roadmap starts with local assembly, then more local value addition, and eventually commercial production in Bangladesh. He gives no dates.
Today local assembly is an ambition. Making it a capability will take investment, technical skill, reliable processes and enough volume to justify bringing more of the chain home. The claim to being a Bangladeshi brand rests on ownership, design direction and decision-making, which sit in Dhaka. "We would rather build that capability step by step and be transparent about where we are today than claim something before we have actually achieved it," he says.
The first collection is the PRIME Series, five variants built for daily wear: Velocity, PEP-SI, Epoch, Orbit and Nova. The brief was a watch that looks premium and stays within reach of a student or a young professional. The all-black stainless steel Prime Velocity has been a standout.
One of the most exciting moments in January was seeing the first orders come from strangers. "When a friend buys your product, you are happy," he says. "When a complete stranger pays for it, that's validation."
The Chrono Legacy came next, under the CHRONO Series. The first lot sold out. Zeeshan reads that as proof of demand for watches with more character and wrist presence, provided the price stays sensible.
Every ZEIT carries a 24-month warranty.
Sales have taught him that "Bangladeshi customers are quite sophisticated". They compare specifications, finishing and prices. A local label gets no discount on any of it.
That feedback now steers the roadmap. ZEIT tracks which models sell faster, which dial colors win, which sizes and weights people tolerate, which price points move, and which features customers keep asking for. Input arrives from the website, social media, retailers, customer service, and direct conversations.
Zeeshan blends it with his own view of trends. "A brand needs a balance between listening to the market and having the confidence to lead it occasionally," he says.
One experiment hands part of the job to customers. In the ZEIT Winter Edition Watch Design Competition, the public submitted watch designs. ZEIT shortlisted concepts and opened them to community voting. He wants a short catalog where each watch has a reason to exist, and he does not want a long one built to look busy.
Zeeshan describes ZEIT as a small experiment. "Like most of my businesses, ZEIT started with a lot of questions and a relatively small experiment," he says. The team skipped a large collection and tested the market with the five-variant PRIME Series. The soft launch in January 2026 was the test.
The loop runs the same way each time. Build something small. Sell it. Watch what happens. Change the product.
ZEIT pays close attention to what people actually buy, not only what they say they like.
BeshiDeshi taught Zeeshan not to assume he knows what customers want. Entrepreneurs fall for their ideas quickly, he says, and "the market has no such emotional attachment." "Those first customers taught us far more than any spreadsheet could."
Mistakes feed the loop. The Chrono Legacy sell-out showed that demand and supply planning are separate problems, and the quality lessons from each production cycle go into the next.
Zeeshan is also working on identity, distribution and service before the formal launch. He says he is thinking about the brand much earlier this time, and about more than the business.
ZEIT runs on the tagline Own Your Time, and Zeeshan wants it to carry weight. "For me, that is more than an advertising line," he says. ZEIT is being built around ambition, individuality, and the idea that your time belongs to you. A ZEIT watch, he says, should feel "contemporary and confident without becoming inaccessible."
The idea of a brand comes from his experience at BeshiDeshi. "BeshiDeshi taught me that building a brand is very different from simply selling products," he says. "You can generate sales through discounts and advertising, but a sustainable brand needs trust, consistency, service and a reason for people to remember it."
His test for a brand is recognition without the logo. He wants someone to spot a ZEIT without reading the dial. "That's when I think we will have truly built a brand," he says.
The same discipline applies to the product line.
Watches come first. "If people hear the name ZEIT, the first association should be watches." Straps, storage and travel cases could follow, but he would "rather expand outward from a strong watch brand than become a lifestyle brand that happens to sell watches."
The plan is clear collections and price segments, each serving a particular customer and each unmistakably ZEIT.
Discovery happens online. Customers find ZEIT through Facebook, Instagram, the website, content creators, and word of mouth. The sale often happens in a shop.
Zeeshan's reasoning is simple. "A photograph can attract you to a watch," he says, "but putting it on your wrist can convince you to buy it." A new Bangladeshi brand also needs trust, and trust builds faster when a customer can hold the product.
So ZEIT started building a physical footprint before launch. It runs its own sales and service center in Mirpur DOHS. Authorized retailers carry it in Mirpur, Dhanmondi, Banani, Gulshan, Baily Road, Shyamoli and Uttara.
Online marketplaces and digital sales partners are being added.
Beyond Dhaka, the plan is to expand to major cities and commercial centers, through retailers, dealers and distributors.
Marketing has produced its own lessons. Boosting a product photograph does not necessarily build a brand. "Reach and engagement are not the same as customer acquisition," he says. What seems to work better is trust stacking. A customer sees ZEIT on Facebook, checks the website, spots a creator wearing it, finds a retailer nearby, tries it on and buys.
Each channel has a job.
The company's own online channel gives it direct customer relationships, data, control of the brand experience and the best margin. Retailers give trial, credibility and foot traffic.
Dealers and distributors will matter once ZEIT goes national, because building its own infrastructure in every city on day one would be wasteful. Company-owned experience centers, kiosks or flagships come later, when the range, the customer base and the economics justify them.
The aim before the formal launch is to have these channels already forming. Zeeshan says he does not want to launch the signature designs and then ask, "Now, how do we get these watches to customers?"
ZEIT shared the structure of its costs without the figures.
The cost stack starts with product development and sampling. Then the movement, case, dial, hands, bracelet or strap, glass, and finishing. Then manufacturing, packaging, freight, import duties and taxes, quality control, warranty provision, after-sales service, payment charges, marketing and distribution.
Inventory is the heavy one. Factories set minimum production quantities. Add several models, dial colors and configurations, and working capital gets locked into stock quickly.
The opposite error costs too.
Chrono Legacy sold out, which proved demand. It also meant waiting for the next production cycle, with months between an empty shelf and a refilled one. Zeeshan puts it plainly: "having demand and being able to fulfill that demand consistently are two different things."
Channel margins follow a trade-off.
Direct online sales keep more of the margin but carry advertising, delivery, payment processing, customer acquisition, and returns. Retail gives up part of the margin in exchange for visibility, product trial, and credibility with buyers who may not order an unfamiliar brand online.
Two features of the model deserve a closer look. The first is lead time. Three to six months to develop a watch, plus production and shipping, means ZEIT cannot react quickly to demand. Forecasting decides how well it does.
The second is the warranty. A 24-month promise on a watch in the Tk 3,500 to Tk 7,000 band keeps a service obligation open for two years after every sale. Zeeshan lists warranty provision among his costs. He has not said how large it is.
Short-term profit is not the goal at this stage. A large share of the money is going back into new product development, the signature collections, inventory, marketing, distribution and the brand itself.
Zeeshan does not name a single constraint. Working capital, inventory, manufacturing, distribution and brand awareness are connected, he says, and the biggest long-term one may be trust.
ZEIT is a new Bangladeshi name in a category where buyers know international names that are decades old. "We have to earn that trust one customer at a time," he says. That is why the formal launch has waited.
The question he asks is, "how do we build the foundation to sell significantly more watches without compromising the product, service or brand in the process?"
Even before a formal launch, ZEIT has had inquiries from Canada and Pakistan about dealerships. They are preliminary. Nothing is finalized.
Zeeshan is treating them with caution. He would rather "enter a few markets properly than be technically 'available' in twenty countries without having a meaningful presence in any of them." Overseas expansion needs the right products, production capacity, quality systems and partners in place first.
He is clear about what would make ZEIT competitive abroad. "Outside Bangladesh, nobody is going to buy ZEIT simply because we are Bangladeshi," he says, "and they shouldn't have to." The design has to be distinctive, the finishing consistent, the components dependable, and the experience, from packaging to warranty, up to international standard. A cheaper copy of someone else's design gives a buyer abroad no reason to choose ZEIT. The brand needs a design language of its own.
Bangladesh may show up in some collections through color, architecture, art or story. He does not want it stamped on every dial.
The interview and fact sheet leave several questions open.
Scale. Units sold, customer numbers, monthly and annual sales, revenue growth, and the online-versus-retail mix are all confidential. The company says the soft launch generated enough sales to validate demand and test pricing. Outsiders cannot yet size that validation.
The signature designs. The formal launch depends on them. ZEIT has not shown them or named a date.
Local assembly. The roadmap names the steps. It names no timeline, no partner, and no investment.
Funding. The interview did not cover how ZEIT finances inventory and its retail expansion.
Team. ZEIT describes a lean core team backed by specialized resources in design, technology, marketing, customer service, operations, and sales. It gave no headcount.
Zeeshan lists his markers of success. Revenue, profit, and enough scale to sustain the company come first. He treats them as the minimum.
After that, a recognizable design language. Repeat buyers. A place in Bangladesh's gifting culture, where a watch marks a wedding, a graduation, a first job, or an anniversary. National reach, so a customer in any major city can find, try, buy, and service a ZEIT. Local capability, starting with assembly. A few overseas markets where people buy it because they like it.
The item he describes most warmly is gifting. A good watch stays with someone for years, and each time they wear it they can remember the person who gave it. "Five years from now, I would love for someone thinking, 'What should I give them for their wedding?' or 'What should I buy for my son's graduation?' to naturally have ZEIT among the brands that come to mind."
He also wants to move one perception. Bangladesh is known abroad for manufacturing, garments above all. Few consumer brands born here are recognized by name. He wants ZEIT to be one of them.
Most of that sits years away. The nearer test is simple. A first buyer is curious. A second purchase means the watch earned its place on the wrist. Everything on Zeeshan's list depends on that, and he states the destination in one line: "We will have started building a Bangladeshi watch brand that can outlive its founders."
| ZEIT at a glance | |
| Company | ZEIT Limited, established in 2025 |
| Tagline | Own Your Time |
| Soft launch | January 2026 |
| Formal launch | Pending, tied to signature designs |
| Product lines | PRIME Series (Velocity, PEP-SI, Epoch, Orbit, Nova); CHRONO Series (Chrono Legacy) |
| Target price | Tk 3,500 to Tk 7,000 |
| Warranty | 24 months |
| Design | Bangladesh |
| Manufacturing | Contract manufacturers in China |
| Development cycle | Three to six months per watch |
| Own presence | Sales and service center, Mirpur DOHS |
| Retail | Mirpur, Dhanmondi, Banani, Gulshan, Baily Road, Shyamoli, Uttara |
| Online | Own website, marketplaces, digital partners |
| International | Dealership inquiries from Canada and Pakistan, unconfirmed |
| Sales, revenue, units, channel mix | Confidential |
| Website | myzeitwatch.com |
