Sameer Mehta and Aman Gupta launched boAt in 2016 having a clear vision on the design and Intellectual Property. Today, boAt is available in 5,000 retail stores, supported by 20 wholesalers. The startup professes to clock sales of more than 10,000 units every day, and 4,000,000 units for each year, and says it has served 20 million Indians up until now. In FY 2020, it clocked a revenue of Rs 500 crore, up by 108.8 percent from Rs 239.44 crore in FY 2019, while the business has been beneficial for 5 successful years.
Behind boAt’s development is a customer-first methodology, which has made the startup one of the most sought after youth brands in India. Almost 80% of its business originates from online business channels, for example, Amazon and Flipkart. By paying regard to a large number of clients’ reviews online, boAt was able to learn what different brands would not like to learn — that Indians loved a product that can be essential for their way of life. Our hypothesis was to listen to the consumer and to address their needs. In the D2C world, the consumer’s feedback is instant and that is what we listen to build our brand,” says Aman Gupta.
Building a Global D2C Brand for boAt
When bOAt was launched Indian players couldn’t compete with Chinese brands and their financial muscles. “That is why we focused on product quality and starting with small numbers. We started our business by launching indestructible charging cables in 2015, and realized that owning the IP in a brand is very important rather than just sourcing products from China, which a lot of other brands were doing at the time,” he says. The boAt is a pun on the excursion of a person to a spot where they feel calm and overlook all their difficulties. The two founders began Imagine Marketing in 2014, the parent organization of boAt, with Rs 30 lakh raised from loved ones, and designed the first product — boAt BassHeads225 — and launched it in 2016. However, the genuine development for boAt occurred with their offline extension, which added to their online sales in FY 2018 and FY 2019.
Strategizing Online and Offline Growth for boAt
In May 2018, Fireside Ventures invested in boAt, and its founder Kanwaljit Singh got pivotal in the organization’s offline strategy. Up to that point, the founders of boAt were reluctant to work with retailers and wholesalers. Until then, the founders of boAt were reluctant to work with retailers and distributors. “The working capital required to withstand retail distribution would have been very difficult for a brand like ours because the retail ecosystem returns the product if it does not get sold,” says Aman.
However, Kanwaljit demanded that to capture India’s consumption story, boAt must launch its offline strategy. The founders started meeting wholesalers and training them in boAt’s value framework. Aman accepts that retailers must be trained to become “boAt heads”, a term utilized for the startup’s community of loyalists. As it would turn out, a distributor in Mumbai, watching the accomplishment of boAt, consented to pay the entire amount to purchase a large number of units from the organization. Aman yielded and the distributor turned into a brand supporter, and still makes crores from boAt items.
At present, 20% of its sales — worth nearly Rs 100 crore — originate from its offline business. The startup additionally sells its products at Reliance Digital and Croma stores. Drawing motivation from Amazon and Jeff Bezos, Aman says he is focusing on making a consistent encounter and building a premium optimistic brand. Aman, with boAt’s 15-member R&D group and the startup’s design head, guarantees that when a product is launched, it is original in ownership and longevity.
“When we launched wireless earpods, we did not launch them because global brands had done so. In fact, we took a year to work on a product that has our brand DNA, which is offering more bass to the pods. The product was also developed with Hardik Pandya, one of our brand ambassadors,” says Aman. At present, boAt has a few influencers, from cricket like K L Rahul and Rishabh Pant, fashion icons, musicians, and actors. The company believes the lifestyle segment is only going to grow as young Indians are consuming a lot more.
We listen to our community and we identified that our fans like sports and films. So, we created themes like ‘Sound of the Champions’ and brought in the cricketers. We created ‘Glamour of the Stars’ and brought in Kartik Aryan and Kiara Advani, and finally created ‘Soul of the Musicians’ with stars such as Neha Kakkar, Diljit Dosanjh, and Naezy. We designed our earpods by customizing them with Hardik Pandya. The brand is about the future and the trendiness of the future stars,” adds Aman.
Market and the Way Ahead
An ongoing BCG report says that the retail business in India is $750 billion in size and will be $1 trillion in five years. In 2019, information by IDC ranked boAt as the main brand in the earwear segment with a 27.3 percent market share. The by and large ‘earwear’ market developed multi-fold with 443.6 percent during 2019, making it one of the fastest developing consumer electronics categories in the nation according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Wearable Device Tracker 4Q19 release.
Due to COVID-19, the company is planning to work intimately with manufacturers in Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore, and reduce its reliance on China. Make in India is a long-term vision and it will happen. The company is planning to expand the Indian manufacturing bets in years to come. For now, the focus is to make an environment, a network, and be a wearable and hearable organization. In four years, the founders intend to significantly increase boAt’s income. The brand will keep on focusing on its online business and furthermore needs to consummate its client needs.
