Hypo-hyper-d-electronic interactive nature is used to develop a new carbon supported HT-Pt-TiO2 composite catalyst comprising Pt and Ti in varying atomic ratio, namely 1:1, 2:1 and 3:1. The electro-catalysts are characterized by XRD, TEM, SEM-EDAX, Cyclic Voltammetry (CV) and Linear sweep voltammetry (LSV) techniques. HT-Pt-TiO2/C catalysts exhibit significant improvement in oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) over Pt/C. The effect of composition towards ORR with and without ethanol has been studied. The direct ethanol fuel cell (DEFC) with HT-Pt-TiO2/C cathode catalyst exhibits an enhanced peak power density of 41 mW cm(-2), whereas 21 mW cm(-2) is obtained for the DEFCs with carbon-supported Pt catalyst operating under identical conditions. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.