Boat doesn't have a wide history. It is a Delhi based startup started in 2016 by the founders Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta. founders started with an aim of bringing affordable, durable, and more importantly, ‘fashionable’ audio products and accessories to millennials. Boat is a brainchild of this idea.

The company began its journey as a cable manufacturer and seller company. Now it sells a wide variety of audio-focused electronic gadgets like wireless speakers, earbuds (Airdopes), wired and wireless headphones and earphones, home audio equipment, premium rugged cables, and a selection of other technological accessories.

Imagine Marketing, which owns the brand Boat has on boarded over 110 staff to its workforce and the headcount has now reached 300, the company said in a statement.

Aman Gupta

Aman Gupta is also the co-founder and the CMO of Boat. Born in 1982, Aman Gupta is 40 years old now. He pursued his bachelor's degree in Commerce from Delhi University, after which he joined The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. Gupta also pursued an MBA in General Management and Marketing as an Exchange student at the Kellogg School of Management from Northwestern University and then went for an MBA in Finance, and Strategy at the Indian School of Business. Starting as an Assistant Manager with Citi, Aman became the CEO and Co-founder of Advanced Telemedia Pvt Ltd. He then joined as a Senior Management Consultant at KPMG, Gupta then joined as a Sales Director at Harman International. Aman Gupta ultimately co-founded boAt in 2016 with Sameer.

Sameer Mehta

Sameer Mehta is the co-founder and the CPO of Boat. He is also the Executive Director of Kores presently. Sameer Mehta started his career at Redwood Interactive and was the owner of the company. Mehta completed his schooling at St. Xavier School, Mumbai, and pursued his bachelor's degree in Commerce from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics.Sameer Mehta co-founded Boat with Aman Gupta in 2016.

Investments in Startup

boAt Lifestyle is a company that has just started to sail in the deep sea of audio devices market. However, the numbers are promising for them as they continuously rise amidst all the competition. The company struggled in its initial two years. Aman and Sameer had started with a capital of around 3 million, coming from the two founders.

In 2018, Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures invested 60 million in the company. Singh was impressed with the founders’ ability to white spots, the product quality, and right targeting. 

boAt is funded by 5 investors. Qualcomm Ventures and Warburg Pincusare the most recent investors.boAt has raised a total of $116.3 Min funding over 6 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on Apr 16, 2021 from a Series B round.

Market Performance of Company

According to filings with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), boAt’s FY2018 revenues grew to Rs 108 crore from only Rs 27 crore in FY2017.In 2019, boAt audio was the leading brand with a 27.3 percent market share in the ear wear category. 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 profitable for five years straight. 

boAT posted a 2X growth in its revenues, which grew from Rs 704 crore in FY20 to Rs 1,531 crore in FY21. The revenue from operations of boAT was recorded at Rs 1511.7 crore in FY21 while its other income recorded a revenue of Rs 19.57 crore. The EBIDTA of boAT was reported to be Rs 127.1 crore during FY21.

boAt increased its profits by 61% to Rs 78.6 crore in FY21 from Rs 48.85 crore, which is witnessed in FY20. However, boAt's expenditure ballooned 122%. It was last recorded at Rs 637.5 crore in FY20, which increased to Rs 1,420 crore in FY21.

According to market research firm Counterpoint, India's neckband market shipments declined 13% year-over-year (YoY) in the first quarter of 2022 but grew 34% YoY in 2021.Locally manufactured 1 mln units of various products in Q1FY23.

Imagine Marketing, had claimed the top spot in the wearables segment with 39.3% market share in 2021, according to IDC India.

Boat - Acquisitions

boAt has acquired 2 companies - Tagg and Cove IoT. The latter is a recent acquisition made by Boat on January 15, 2022. The acquisition of the Singapore-based smart wearables IoT (internet-of-things) product development startup will help Boat enhance the development of its wearables with the help of KaHa Pte Ltd's (Cove IoT) innovative concepts and design.

Boat - Business and Revenue Model

The company focused on 3 important market strategies to create a good consumer base -

• Consumer's Needs
• Consumer's Desires
• Consumer's Behaviour Pattern

The founders implemented their research on the products and made the products affordable, durable, and fashionable. boAt focuses on building a customer-brand relationship where it considers the buyers as a member of the boAt family. They also focused a lot on the brand boAt and presented it as an Indian brand. For the marketing of the brand, boAt decided to appoint cricketers and other celebrities as the brand ambassadors of boAt because the Indians are very fond of cricket and Bollywood films. All of these helped the company create a considerable consumer base and become a billion dollar company in India with smart pricing and attractive looks. boAt now claims of selling four products every passing minute.

Some other strategies that helped boAt climb the ladder of success in the audio segment of the Indian market are:

1.Keeping the customers first - boAt has decided to term its users "boatheads", thereby making them a part of their clan instead of keeping them anonymous.

2. A range of improvisations - boAt is known for its innovations and improvisations. The company carved out an indestructible cable for the Apple mobile users after discovering the endless complaints about the Apple charging cables. As soon as it sensed the urgency of sports and fall-proof headphones, boAt immediately moved out to build them, which are now available in a variety of colours.

3. Posing as a lifestyle brand - boAt marked them as a lifestyle brand rather than calling them a consumer electronics brand.

4. An ever-expanding catalogue of products - boAt products are ever-increasing. From cables to chargers to audio products, boAt is simply bringing new products powered by innovative technologies and awesome designs.

5. Targeting their customers - The youth and millennials are the target customers of the brand and the company is making sure to impress them at any cost. This is the way the company is speedily steering forth.

6. Digital marketing- The company has distinctively stayed away from the traditional media, thereby choosing the digital way for marketing. Social media platforms like Facebook and others have solely become the pillars of success for boAt.

The revenues of boAt mainly come through the sale of its products.

Boat - Growth

The company retails at Croma outlets and in Myntra, Amazon, Jabong, and Flipkart. Quality performance of the boAt products has helped the company a lot in achieving the growth it has witnessed over the years.

Here's a quick glance at some growth milestones of Boat:

• The boAt has gathered 800,000+ customers within a short span of 4 years
• It claims to add one boAthead to its family within every 3 minutes that pass
• The company sells 4 units every minute and over 6,000 units each day
• boAt audio was declared as the leading brand in the earwear category, with 27.3% of the market shares
• The business has been profitable for 5+ years straight
• The boAt has its products in 5,000+ retail stores and is supported by over 20 distributors

What Makes Boat Unique?

Success requires connecting several dots to form a line. boAt is no exception in the terms of the process. However, they modified their approach from the beginning when they projected themselves as a lifestyle brand and kept on improvising. There are several factors that put boAt on the road to success.

Consumer-first approach and improvisations

The company has a specific term for its community of users. Anyone who owns a boAt product is anointed as boAthead and made a part of the clan. This gives users a feeling of belongingness. The company believes in closely observing the needs of users and developing products accordingly. Its first product was an indestructible Apple charging-cable and charger. The product was developed after the founders sensed it’s urgency. 

Some of the key insights over the past three years have been that people are increasingly looking for sports and fall-proof headphones, and that boAt’s products were getting boring. The start-up, therefore, launched fall-proof headphones and introduced interesting colors for their products.

Portrayal as a lifestyle brand

The company portrays itself as a lifestyle brand rather than calling a consumer electronics brand. This strategy was on display at the 2019 Lakmé Fashion Week in Mumbai where boAt products were the only accessories sported by the models when they walked down the ramp for one of the designers.

“We have tried to change the consumer mindset. We don’t sell our
products as electronics only. We sell them as lifestyle 
accessories. We are trying to portray that our products can be a
 part of your everyday fashion.”
- Aman Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, boAt

Continuously expanding catalog

After launching the indestructible Apple charging-cable and charger, the second product they brought was an audio range, which included earphones. The company used critical insight on consumers to decide that Indians love bass. Their first earphones were called BassHeads. 

The organized earphones market was estimated to be between 30 billion to 40 billion, and it was growing at 20-30% annually. In 2018, boAt launched speakers and, in 2019, soundbars and home-audio systems. The soundbar is priced at 9,000 and it sells 30 to 40 units a day.

Right targeting

boAt lifestyles are reckoned as millennials’ brands. The company provides stylish and affordable products that attract the youth. Also, the brand ambassadors are all young faces. Much of the buzz boAt has picked up can be attributed to its brand ambassadors who represent India’s most-followed passions (and obsessions) - Bollywood and cricket. The company even develops products specifically for young people. For instance, Sports Earphones and Bluetooth Speakers have caught the fancy of India’s increasingly fitness-focussed millennials. Consumers pick and choose accessories that fit in their workouts, trails, hikes, basically their lifestyle. 

Online marketing

The company has stuck to online modes to market their products. The brand has stayed away from conventional media such as TV and print. They have mostly run their campaigns on Facebook and other social media networks. One of the founders cited the reason being millennials mostly online. Pankaj Mirchandani, managing partner at Rhythm Corner Alaknanda (RCA), a marketer and distributor of electronics in India, says, “What has worked for boAt is the community of fans they have built online, which is quite commendable”. There is now an online community of boAtheads with around 80,000 members at present. The company also uses Celebs word-of-mouth as their marketing strategy. 

“Our product is excellent and coupled with outstanding marketing, 
that is what is the secret to our success,” 
- Aman Gupta, CEO and Co-Founder, boAt

(Referred Blog: IoT in the music industry )

Boat - Future Plans

The company believes that there is always a trend of buying earphones along with the new smartphones. Boat finds this concept to be a channel of success for them. According to the reports, the major phone makers are in the process of stitching new relations with audio companies. For example -Samsung has got JBL and Harman, Apple has Beats, and so on. These manufacturers are attracting consumers with hot deals so that the users don't buy earphones or headphones separately.

Boat is currently aiming to provide more and more products to satisfy the increasingly high demand for technological gadgets and bring them at affordable rates to its users with style! The brand wants to help the Indians get all the quality technological devices that they need from the homegrown brand Boat, without letting them rely on the other foreign brands.

Conclusion

We have almost covered the small journey of this lifestyle brand. They have just entered the market but have already acquired a fig percentage of it. boAt lifestyle offers stylish as well as durable products which has been the highlight. Their effect on the market has been so much that the popularity of products of boAt has forced big giants like JBL to lower down the prices of their products to compete in the affordable audio segment.

Technology has made our lives better and it is the biggest enabler in the world we live in right now. boAt Lifestyle wants to be at the forefront of the changes in the audio market. The brand doesn’t seem to stop but rather embark on a great journey ahead.

CEO Aman Gupta in an interview said that “ With screen space getting more personal, there is a huge demand for personal devices like headphones.”