boat company case study ppt

BoAt Case Study: Business, Marketing Strategy & Success Story

Boat Case Study

About Boat:

Introduction:.

It takes a lot of effort for a brand to become popular among others. A strong marketing strategy , keeping pace with the changes in society, and understanding the masses are a few elements that if followed judiciously, can yield great results for the business.

In today’s article, I am going to discuss one such company which touched heights in a very less time. We shall understand their strategies and what worked for them. We shall discuss the Indian-based consumer electronic brand, “Boat”.

Music – a natural healer:

Music is something that acts as a natural way to rejuvenate our souls. Music can become your travel partner too. Even medical science uses Music therapy to treat certain ailments like autism, Alzheimer’s, depression, and many more.

It is believed that music boosts memory, improves self-love and self-esteem, reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, and builds a better human being. With so many benefits, music has been the topmost priority of people when they want to refresh themselves.

BoAt case study:

Every person has his/ her preferences in selecting music. This has led to the emergence of portable music devices like headphones, headsets, and earphones.

These devices let you enjoy your selected music without creating a hindrance to others. So the demand for portable music devices has increased tremendously over the past few years. Thus many companies have come up with different forms of musical devices.

One such popular brand is “Boat”, which provides one of the best portable music devices on the market. It provides a huge variety of devices. Using good headphones, the user can listen to music as well as connect with professionals without holding the phone.   

The emergence of the company:

A Delhi-based startup was founded in Nov. 2013. From 2013 to 2016, the company was struggling hard to generate sales . So in 2016, the company brought changes to its business strategies. BoAt emerged as a lifestyle brand that deals with fashionable electronic devices. The main idea behind launching the brand was to bring affordable, fashionable, and durable audio devices to accessorize people of different age groups. 

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Beginning of the journey: challenges faced by boat company

The company began as a cable manufacturer and seller company. In the initial years, BoAt bought earphones from Chinese manufacturers, applied branding on them, and sold them in the Indian markets bearing the name “BoAt earphones”.

It has grown in years to emerge as a popular global brand to sell fashionable audio devices ranging from portable travel charges to premium headsets. In just a few years, the company has successfully gathered more than 70,000 happy customers and popular brand ambassadors.

BoAt has emerged as the 5th largest global brand in 2020 to provide wearable music devices. Lakme Fashion Week in 2019 held in Mumbai, displayed ramp walkers carrying boAt products as the only accessories.

A story about the emergence & success story of B oat company:

Aman Gupta from Gurugram and the passionate audiophile Sameer Mehta came up with the idea of launching the brand. The rising popularity of Chinese products in the Indian market was something that made them realize the need for swadeshi products. They mainly focussed on providing good quality durable products with affordable prices to Indian customers.

Aman Gupta – Is the co-founder and CMO of boAt. Being a commerce graduate from DU, he jumped from one organization to another to finally land at co-founding one of the most popular audio devices companies in India. 

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He had an incredible career discussed below.  

• Joined The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. 
• Pursued MBA degree in 
• General Management and Marketing, from The Kellogg School of Management from Northwestern University; and
• Finance and Strategy from The Indian School of Business.   
• Joined Citi Bank as an Assistant Manager.
• He applied to work for JBL due to his fascination with gadgets and worked there for 2 years. He managed the offline distribution of JBL through kiosks like Croma, Reliance Digital, etc. During his working period, he learned about product management which later on helped him in co-founding boAt. 
• Became CEO & Co-Founder of the Advanced Telemedia Pvt. Ltd.  
• Became Senior Management Consultant of KPMG (Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler).
• Joined Harman International (JBL) as a Sales Director.
• Finally in 2016 co-founded boAt along with his partner Sameer Mehta.
• Also co-founded the parent company of boAt named “ Imagine Marketing India ”.

Sameer Mehta – Co-founder, CPO of boAt and ED of Kores. In the initial stage of his career, Sameer Mehta was the owner of a company named “Redwood Interactive”. Being a student of St. Xavier School, Mumbai, he pursued a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the popular Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics.

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Goals and vision of boat company:

BoAt found flaws in the longevity of mobile charging cables used in the market. The founders witnessed frequent damage caused to such cables due to internal and external factors and thought of finding out solutions to such problems. So they focussed on launching indestructible cables. Soon they launched water and sweat-resistant hearable products. 

Selling partners and brand endorsements:

The brand sells a variety of its products on popular eCommerce sites like Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Jabong, etc., and even in retail outlets like Croma. It is believed that BoAt was born virtually on Amazon.com. The company tied up with 6 IPL teams Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings. 

The company includes popular endorsements from famous personalities of different industries like Bollywood, cricket, etc. Personas like Hardik Pandya, K.L.Rahul, Shikhar Dhawan, Kartik Aryan, Neha Kakkar, Kiara Advani, Jacqueline Fernandez, and many others are endorsements of boAt. Also, the company has co-branded with musical events like the Sunburn Festival and Lakme Fashion Week, etc.  

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BoAt efficiently uses the benefits of influencer marketing to promote its products. It calls its influencers “BoAtheads”. BoAt recently collaborated with Alcobev company Bira 91 and together launched an exclusive audio collection named BOOM on January 20, 2022. The collaboration saw an amalgamation of Bira 91’s vibrant colors and boAt’s exclusive audio experience.

Recently BoAt launched a line of products especially targeting the Marvel fanbase. It launched earbuds, headphones, and speakers having characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther on them. 

boAt’s Investors:

2018: an investor Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures, invested 60 million in BoAt. He was spellbound by the unique performance of the company from choosing the right audience to maintaining a standard quality of products.

2021: Qualcomm Ventures invested INR 50 crore in the company at a valuation of INR 2200 crore. The boAt has a total of 5 investors.

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Some popular products of boAt:

the boAt has a wide range of products available for every individual. Its products range from wireless earphones, and audio-focused electronic devices to assorted mobile accessories and much more.

Wireless earbuds

BoAt has a line of wireless earbuds in the name of “Airdopes’ ‘. A major difference between an EarPod and an Airpod is that AirPods are completely wireless whereas original EarPods are the wired version.

BoAt Airdopes has an active noise cancellation technology that cancels out any external noise and delivers only the pure sound of your media. Bluetooth connectivity enables wireless usage of the device. The Airdopes come with a case having an in-built battery to charge the wireless Airdope when not in use.   

Tethered wireless earbuds:

BoAt offers a range of tethered wireless earbuds under the brand name Rockerz and Boat. Such earbuds are not connected directly to an audio source. The earbuds are connected through a wire or a band. The wire/ band houses the batteries and control systems. Users can wear the band around their neck or behind their heads.

Wireless headphones:

BoAt offers wireless headphones in two forms- on-ear and over-ear. The headphones are under the brand name Rockerz, BoAt, and Nirvana. Unlike headphones of other companies, BoAt headphones have built-in Bluetooth connectivity to connect to any audio source.

The user need not connect the headphone with the audio source through any wire. The wireless headphone contains lithium-ion batteries integrated into the device. Many of the models of BoAt’s wireless headphones come with an auxiliary audio cable that can be plugged into standard headphone jacks. Connecting the headphones with the auxiliary cable does not drain down the extra charge. 

Earbuds and wired earphones:

BoAt earbuds and wired earphones get connected to a standard headphone jack of the user’s audio-output device like a music system, mobile, PC, etc. The headphones and earbuds offer good noise cancellation by obstructing external sounds which create hindrance in the musical journey of the user.   

B oAt smartwatch:

The company offers smartwatches with various modes. For instance, the sports mode helps you track your steps while cycling, walking, hiking, climbing, exercising, etc. It is a great option for fitness freaks. The smartwatches also provide a Bluetooth calling facility to enable the user to receive calls without holding his phone. The screen of the smartwatch will display the caller’s detail and provide you with an option to either receive or decline the call. The watch even has a loudspeaker with which you can have an amazing conversation with the caller. The IPX Water Resistance ensures the longevity of your device by being sweat and swim-proof. boAt smartwatches also have a menstrual tracker for women, making them one of the best smartwatches for men and women. 

B oAt wireless speakers:

BoAt offers an exclusive range of attractive portable wireless speakers under its brands Rugby and Stone. The speakers have effective Bluetooth connectivity and built-in batteries for an efficient wireless experience. They are affordable, provide louder sound output and have long battery life. The boAt Bluetooth speakers can be used indoors as well outdoors. 

Indoor theatre soundbars:

BoAt offers another range of home audio equipment through its brand Avante. It delivers subwoofers and home theatre sound systems to be connected with televisions and home theatres. It has exclusive features like Bluetooth, auxiliary audio cables, HDMI, and USB-A. These speakers give you a theatre experience. You can get the feeling of sitting in a hall without even booking a ticket. The captivating sound of Dolby Audio Technology is what will drive you crazy about this audio device.  

Mobile accessories:

Along with fancy audio devices, the brand also provides portable devices to accessorize your mobile devices, like USB cables, auxiliary cables, power banks, adapter chargers, and many more. Boat power backup external batteries are available under its brand “Energyshroom”. 

B oAt limited edition:

Limited/ special edition of a brand is the upgraded version of an existing product. The purpose behind launching a limited edition product is to promote the brand or establish collaborations with other brands. The Boat provides limited edition products to its customers which are in form of headphones/ speakers/ cables, and many more. 

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BoAt revenue performance report 2022: 

The largest product line of BoAt was wireless earphones and headphones. The sales grew by 2.5 times to Rs.947.4 crore in FY 21 from Rs.375.7 crore in FY 20. The second position was taken by the wireless speakers. Sales of the speakers grew up to 2.6 times from Rs.113.2 crore in FY20 to Rs.297.4 crore during FY21. The manufacturing and assembling of the company take place in China. The company plans to shift its manufacturing industry to India through the Indian Government’s PLI (Production Linked Incentive) scheme. The company’s total annual expenditure grew 2.2times from Rs.637.6 crore in FY20 to Rs.1420.1 crore during FY21.  

BoAt’s revenue has crossed a whopping 500crore in FY2020, which was the expected revenue of the company for FY 21-22. Today, the company has 5000+ retail stores and 20 distributors. 

Shareholders of BoAt:

The owners Sameer Mehta and Aman Gupta hold 28.26% of equity share capital on a diluted basis, i.e. both the founders hold 56.52% in the company. The BRLMs(Book Running Lead Managers) are Axis Capital, Credit Suisse, ICICI Securities, BofA Securities, and Link Intime.  

BoAt recently signed a 50-50 john venture with the electronic manufacturer Dixon Technology Ltd. to establish a powerful manufacturing base in India for local production of its products. It was a step to move away from China. 

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Marketing strategies of BoAt:

• Private label business – In the initial years of its origin, the brand used the traditional business model of Private Label Business, where it purchased its products from Chinese manufacturers, did the branding, and sold them in India under the name of “BoAt products”. This method did not benefit the company. So to increase its sales, the company thought of changing its business model .
• Designer electronic devices – Till 2014, audio devices were sold in the market as simple electronic devices. Nobody focussed on their design. The boAt started launching electronic products which grabbed the attention of the audience due to their unique designs. It sells audio devices like accessories.  The boAt is also collaborating with the fashion industry. It launched spunky headphones at the Lakme Fashion Week 2020 by collaborating with the popular fashionista Masaba Gupta. Together, they launched products that gave a feel of the disco style of the late 70s. 

• Digital marketing – To increase sales, BoAt adopted digital marketing techniques in its marketing strategy. For a successful business, it has to first create demands in the existing market. So the founders turned their focus around e-commerce. The marketing strategies of the company are as under:
• Mobile marketing – boAt connects with its audience and customers through a mobile app, emails, and SMS marketing.   
• Email marketing – The company sends personalized messages to their existing and potential customers informing them about a new product or upcoming discounts. Such messages carry catchy and crisp emails.
• Social media marketing – boAt has reached great success through social media marketing. It makes a presence on digital platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.
• Hashtag Marketing – The company smartly uses catchy hashtags to increase customer conversion. Such hashtags have made a remarkable presence on social media platforms. Some of the popular hashtags used by the company are #boatheads, #levelupwithboat, #raisethebar, and others.  
• Campaigning through social media – Instagram stories are created and shared by BoAt under the name “boAt adventures” to catch the attention of the audience. Digital campaigns have helped the company connect with the right target audience and share the right type of content. 
• Influencer marketing – boAt has struck deals with influencers, celebrities, and popular personalities from different industries. Celebrities like Kartik Aryan, Kiara Advani, and Jacqueline Fernandes are some famous endorsements of BoAt. Also, popular content creators like Prajakta Koli, Harsh Beniwal, and Bhuvan Bam are some of the promoters of the brand.  
• Engagement Marketing – Concerts created by boAt are unforgettable to the audience. The company uses a two-way communication method using photo booths, and nirvana zones and asks its customers to participate. They then share customer stories on their official Instagram page. This creates emotional bonding between BoAt and the audience and creates a loyal customer base. This engaged communication generates buzz around the market. Further boAt has conducted takeover tours with popular musicians like A.P.Dillon and has successfully launched campaigns in Mumbai, Chandigarh, Goa, Gurugram, and Hyderabad. In 2019, boAt conducted the Sunburn Festival at Goa where stars like Wiz Khalifa, DJ Snake, Tyga, and Yellow Claw performed.  

• Offline marketing – Digital marketing has been proved to be a very effective marketing strategy for many businesses. Offline marketing like print media, newspaper ads, and others also play a pivotal role in promoting a business. The boAt uses print media to promote its brand. The company also sells through retail outlets like Reliance Digital and Croma.  

• Innovation – The company experts adopt innovation in their product range. The company keeps launching different types of products and continuously grabs the attention of its audiences. Every product launched by the company has a touch of innovation.   

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boAt mainly focuses on customer needs, the customer wants, and their behavioural patterns. The company made its products affordable and durable for every type of customer. The brand deeply studied the market and its customers. Thus it collaborated with cricketers, musicians, fashionistas, and such personalities who were popular among the target audiences . In such a way the company could successfully create a strong customer base and become a billion-dollar company in India.    

Triumphs of BoAt:

The boAt has emerged as the 5th biggest audio company in the world. There is no particular tip or reason behind such a huge success. The consistency in the efforts put in the company by the team has given them such a huge success in a short period. Let us discuss some of the reasons for their success.

Reasons for the success of BoAt:

• Improvisations – BoAt refers to the influencers of its brand as BoAtheads. They form an integral part of the clan. The company aims at customer satisfaction and brings in products based on their likes and requirements. This gives their users a feeling of belongingness. The products of the company are fresh and colourful.  
• Adaptability – The steep growth of the company is mainly because it adapts itself to the changing trend in the market. It kept a keen eye on the latest trends in the market. It constantly kept adopting such changes in its marketing strategies. The brand’s first product was the indestructible Apple charging cable followed by an exclusive range of earphones. Their first earphones were named BassHeads. Soon after, in 2018, the brand came up with a wide range of speakers. In 2019, BoAt launched soundbars and home theatre systems. 
• Classification as a lifestyle brand – The brand depicts itself as a lifestyle brand and not a consumer electronic brand. These tactics were displayed during the 2019 Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai, where the models displayed boAt products as their only accessories while dressed up in designer outfits.
• Blitzscaling – It refers to the quick growth of a company. This method prioritizes speed over efficiency. This method is also used by companies like PayPal and Airbnb. This risky method is meant to provide quick success.
• Targeting the appropriate group – The brand is famous for providing stylish products at affordable rates. The brand selects younger personalities as its ambassadors. The company focuses on providing lifestyle products mainly targeting the younger mass. 
• Digital marketing – The company saw a steep growth in sales during its initial period. It bypassed the traditional marketing mediums like TV and print media. The campaign by BoAt mostly runs on digital platforms like Facebook, Instagram, etc. The online group of BoAtheads consists of 80,000 members at present. Word-of-Mouth marketing is another marketing strategy of BoAt.    The company claims to sell 4 units every minute and 6,000+ units per day. The company establish 5000+ retail outlets and is supported by 20+ distributors. 

Must read: Content Marketing: Create & Deploy an Effective Content Marketing Strategy to Skyrocket Your Business

Awards and recognitions of BoAt:

• 2020: Company was declared as ‘No. 1 brand’ for truly wireless earwear in India.
• 2020: Declared as “5th largest wearable brand in the world” 
• 2021: Selected as the official audio partner of 6 IPL teams

Wrapping up:

Within 6 years, boAt company has successfully captured the whole world of electronic gadgets in a spellbound way. It has established itself as the 5th largest wearable brand in the world and the number 1 brand in India. The marketing strategies of the brand are commendable. The company mainly focuses on smart and crisp marketing campaigns. They have smartly used the digital platform for the promotion of their products. Even during the pandemic, the brand used different tactics to stay relevant in the market. Their popularity has forced other big companies like JBL to lower their product prices to compete in the affordable audio device category.   

FAQs related to BoAt:

What is boat.

It is an Indian startup that manufactures and distributes electronic gadgets. The brand has become India’s favored wearable brand. 

Who founded boAt?

The boAt was founded by Sameer Mehta and Aman Gupta in 2016.

Is boAt an Indian or a Chinese company?

The boAt is an Indian-based consumer electronics brand that provides a wide range of wearable, stylish and affordable audio devices.

Who is the present CEO of boAt?

Vivek Gambhir is the present CEO of boAt.

Suraj Shrivastava

Suraj Shrivastava at ForgeFusion shares simple, effective ways to grow your business using SEO, content marketing, and AI, learned from helping over 50 companies. When he’s not working, he loves teaching others or watching documentaries.

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Boat Branding Case Study: How boAt Captured the Audio Market

Damini Bhandary

Technology has advanced to such a level that, we are surrounded by some of the greatest inventions of humankind. Wherever we looked at, we are surrounded by electronic devices from smartwatches, to wireless speakers to wireless earbuds; all of these are keeping us preoccupied with their services.

The tech market is at its top form now. Music is something that soothes our soul, so there is hardly anyone who doesn’t like listening to music. It becomes even better when you’re travelling alone, nothing can beat the feeling of having music as your companion.

Now, every person has their own preferences, including for music as well, in this case, headsets and earphones are mandatory so that you could listen to your favourite tracks without being a hindrance to others.

The demand for headphones and earbuds has increased at an immense level in the last few years. So much that we will always find a person holding one of the equipment, all the time. There are various companies that provide all types of mobile phone assortment to their customers including earphones and headsets. Among them, one of the most famous ones in India is the company called boat.

In this article, we will talk about boAt's branding strategy and how it has established itself with its prominent and quality products as one of the most loved consumer electronics brands in India.

“What new technology does is create new opportunities to do a job that customers want done.” –Tim O’Reilly

About boAt Branding Strategy of boAt Target Audience Promotion and Advertisements Pricing and Quality of the Products FAQ

The boAt is an Indian company that deals with audio tech that mainly focuses on products like wireless speakers, earbuds, smartwatches , headsets, and earphones. All of them are quite accessible in terms of price. the boAt was founded in the year 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta. The main aim of the company is to provide people with fashionable tech and be a part of their daily lifestyles. Currently, Vivek Gambhir is the CEO of the company.

boAt started its journey with the capital of just INR 30 lacs, which was invested by the founders themselves. As per the reports of 2020, boAt is said to be selling 14,000 to 15,000 of its products daily and has over 2 million customers and has bale to attract the attention of their customers by developing a wide range of earphones, wireless speakers, Airdopes and headphones. The quality and the price make it more approachable to its target audience.

Branding Strategy of boAt

boAt first started experimenting by creating Apple charger cables with anti-destruction properties. It was the time when people were suffering because of getting their charger cable damaged without any obvious reason.

boAt grabbed this opportunity and up their game by creating the indestructible charger cable for Apple. This is how they stepped into the market with unique products that solved the problems of the customers .

That was just the beginning, and then the company started creating products like headphones and earphones. It was so reliable that it can be worn even while working out or exercising. These products were able to get popular amongst the younger generation who are into fitness .

Target Audience

From the beginning boAt was focused on the youth who are into fitness, they made all the products by keeping their target audience in mind. The demand for indestructible products has been increasing day by day, they understood it and started developing it. Plus with various advertisements, they tried to capture the attention of their target audience.

Promotion and Advertisements

To promote the durability of the products, boAt made advertisements where it can be seen people wearing all those gadgets while doing intense workouts and jogging, this proves what the brand is trying to convey to its audience.

From the very first, boAt was focused on marketing through digital marketing and social media. It took up many social media influencers to promote the products as well as their brand. Apart from that various celebrities like Cricketers Rishab Pant, Shikhar Dhawan, Virat Kohli , Shreyas Iyer were a part of a group of celebrities who endorsed boAt.

Not only that Bollywood star, Kiara Advani , Kartik Aaryan, and singer Neha Kakkar and Diljit Dosanjh were present in the list of celebrities as well. They mainly focus on athletes for the promotion of their brand.

Apart from all these, boAt has collaborated with Lakme Fashion week in 2019, promoted its products, and introduced itself as a lifestyle brand instead of an electronic brand. With developing products like smartwatches, portable speakers, and other wearable gadgets it has truly transformed itself into one.

These collaborations with different brands that are liked and followed by the youth are getting boAt its audience. Recently, boAt has collaborated with Bira 91, and the products of boAt can be seen in the music video.

Pricing and Quality of the Products

The best factor and one of the reasons that the brand boAt became such a success was its pricing strategy . Neither it is extremely overpriced nor it is unimaginably cheap, it is just in between. The target audience of boAt is mainly youth so they find it perfect to invest in.

Apart from that, even being affordable, boAt has taken special care of the quality of its products; it hasn’t compromised with it even a bit. The current revenue of boAt as per the 2021 financial year is Rs 1,511.7 crore.

It has been 6 years since boAt was founded and within a little, it has been able to capture the world of electronic gadgets in a mesmerizing way. It has established itself as the 5 th largest brand of wearables in the world and the number 1 audio earwear brand in India. By putting all the branding strategies properly, and selecting their target audience carefully, boAt has achieved an immense level of success and it is only going to get bigger and better in the future.

Is boAt a Chinese company?

boAt is an Indian-based consumer electronics brand that focuses on headphones, earphones, earbuds, smartwatches, and wireless portable speakers.

Who is the CEO of boAt?

Vivek Gambhir is the current CEO of boAt.

Why is boAt so successful?

The reason behind boAt's success is its ingenious marketing strategy and affordable prices.

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boAt Marketing Strategy: How the company became the biggest audio superstore in India

Learn about boat's iconic marketing strategy and advertising campaigns. read how boat aces the 4ps of marketing mix - product, price, promotion & placement..

• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="about">About boAt
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="marketing">boAt's 4Ps of Marketing
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="noteworthy">Noteworthy Marketing Campaigns
• overview#goto" data-overview-topic-param="key">Key Takeaways

Audio devices are highly personal such that their own form a part of one's personality. The Indian youth is no different, and many homegrown and international consumer electronics brands strategize to capture this third-largest smart personal audio market .

One such brand is boAt, which successfully launched in the Indian market in 2014 via an aggressive marketing strategy that is also its competitive advantage. Today, it is a success story such that it has captured 32% of the market share and is India's fastest-growing audio brand.

In this article, we break down the boAt marketing strategy and business model that teaches us how to stay relevant in a red ocean market.

About BoAt consumer electronics company

Boat is a consumer electronics startup that brings millennials affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories .

The boAt story began when co-founders  Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta , the owner of Redwood Interactive, saw an opportunity in the Indian market for affordable, good-quality audio products. Aman Gupta used to work as a CA and Assistant Manager at Citi Bank before he joined JBL in 2012.

In 2014, Aman Gupta launched boAt lifestyle when he teamed up with Sameer Sharma to sell unbreakable charging cables for iPhones. Due to his previous experience working for JBL, Aman was ambitious as he had a deeper understanding of the audio industry. Since there weren't any branded manufacturers at low pricing rates, and even if they were, they didn't provide good quality products, there was a HUGE  gap in the market.

Image source: Aman Gupta's Twitter

Since then, the company that began its success story from being a cable manufacturer has expanded its product range to include wireless headphones, wireless speakers, computer gaming peripherals, wireless or wired earphones, Bluetooth speakers, and other electronic gadgets.

BoAt's Investors

In 2018 Investors Kanwaljit Singh and Fireside Ventures invested a combined $600m into the company. They felt enthralled by the extraordinary service of the organization in identifying the right audience and maintaining an outstanding standard of quality products.

As mentioned in their blog , in 2021 Qualcomm ventures  i nvested approximately 100m in the business at an estimated cost of Rs 2200m. Overall, The company now holds five investors.

Image source: Entrepreneur India

Marketing strategies that helped lifestyle brand boAt succeed:  The 4P's of marketing

When talking about boAt as a rising brand providing technical audio support, it's not just any ordinary audio support; it's high-quality, reliable audio that everyone can depend on. So, how does boAt market itself as a brand to ensure consumers understand this?

There are multiple marketing strategies adopted by boAt to become a leading brand in India's fastest-growing audio devices market - let's look at them with 4P analysis lens:

boAt products strategy

boAt started with only accessories, but today offers a wide range of audio products, including boat headphones, boat earphones, wireless speakers, wireless earbuds, home audio equipment, wireless earphones, etc. They have something for everyone, and is a market leader for consumer electronic products in affordable prices or high-end gear range.

Regarding sound quality, the boAt brand is known for delivering exceptional audio. This company aims to deliver products designed to provide an immersive listening experience, and they often use premium materials to ensure optimal sound quality.

Overall, boAt's products are well-made and offer great value for the price. This helps further boat marketing strategy as they can position good quality products at affordable rates compared to the competition in this category.

Image source: India TVNews

boAt's pricing strategy

The boAt pricing strategy is simple yet effective - they offer quality products at an affordable price. This has allowed them to become the biggest audio superstore in India.

boAt offers a wide range of products, from earphones and headphones to speakers and cases. Their prices are highly competitive, and they regularly offer discounts and promotions on their website. This makes them an attractive option for customers looking for quality audio products at a reasonable price.

BoAt Revenue and Marketing Performance

In both the initial years of business as an Indian startup, boAt lifestyle needed more funds. After Fireside ventured, boAt lifestyle has tripled its revenue . In December 2020, boAt became the fifth-biggest wearables brand in the world, overtaking Apple , Samsung, and Xiaomi in India. As reported by Forbes India , boAt's revenue stood at rupees 701 crores in FY20, and profits at rupees 49 crores.

In addition to selling 15,000 units every day within its three million+ online community, it partnered with six IPL teams this year and enlisted 14 brand ambassadors from Bollywood and cricket.

Furthermore, true wireless stereos were priced 48.6 percent cheaper year-on-year in the third quarter of this year, dropping to $57 on average. The market grew to 10 million units during this period, with boAt concentrating on the entry-level product range audio segment, thus finding a sweet spot in terms of pricing.

Image source: Forbes India

boAt's Distribution Channels

The boAT marketing strategy across its product distribution essentially follows a pronged approach when it comes to marketing - online- offline, and word of mouth.

for online digital marketing, the company invested heavily in search engine positioning so that they appear as the top result when users search for keywords related to their products.

Word-of-mouth marketing is also critical for boAT's success. They have leveraged their strong and loyal customer base to spread the word about their products via community-building initiatives. In addition, they've made sure to actively engage with their customers, especially on social media platforms. This has allowed them to get positive reviews which have further boosted sales.

Source: boAt Lifestyle website

All in all, the boAt marketing strategy of combining online, offline, and word-of-mouth tricks has helped them stand out from their competitors. Their focus on creating an omnichannel presence along with engaging customer relationships has enabled them to become one of India's most recognized brands in the audio equipment segment.

boAt's Promotion Strategy

To break into the audio market, boAt had to establish itself as one of the significant premium brands and invested heavily in digital marketing and influencer marketing to reach a wider audience.

boAt’s digital campaigns included creating digital content for its target audience, advertising on major digital platforms like Instagram and YouTube, and engaging with online influencers to a   brand development hype.

boAt collaborated with celebrities and content creators such as actors Ranbir Kapoor, Kartik Aaryan and influencers such as the YouTube sensation Prajakta Koli who could help spread the word about their fashionable audio products. This led to widespread brand visibility and an aura of exclusivity being created around BoAt products.

Let us look at various promotional marketing strategies adopted by the boAt brand:

Lifestyle Marketing strategy

To market itself as a lifestyle brand, India's leading audio support company, boAt made use of various marketing strategies.

Firstly, it utilized social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to reach its target audience. Through these platforms, boAt created a community of people who shared the same passion for the music industry and audio products.

For example their Marvel Collection was a special collection of earbuds, headphones, and speakers designed especially for Marvel fans. This collection features characters like Iron Man, Captain America, and Black Panther.

Images source: boAt lifestyle

Organizing events and meet-ups

Secondly, the company began organizing events and meet-ups where like-minded individuals could come together and share their love for music. This helped create a solid bond between the brand and its existing and potential customers.

Traditional marketing strategies

Finally, boAt also used traditional marketing channels such as television and print media to spread awareness about the brand. Overall, using a combination of online and offline marketing strategies, boAt successfully established itself as a lifestyle brand.

Personalized message strategy

For the boAt marketing strategy to win, the brand needed to focus on customer service. It did this by ensuring that its customers could get the best possible experience when using its products. They sent personalized messages via emails and SMS, created a customer care helpline, tailored warranty policies, and kept the customer in mind when designing new products.

Additionally, now Boat offers "Do what #floats your boat" pages on its very own website. They designed various digital marketing campaigns around this for building a stronger community. This allowed customers to get quick help and walkthroughs on using specific products or features according to their tastes.

Image source: boAt lifestyle website

Apart from all this, the boAt co-founders, especially Aman Gupta has become very popular since his stint in Shark Tank India edition. He is publicly appreciated and loved, and his brand received a lot of publicity thanks to the show's popularity.

Noteworthy boAt Marketing Campaigns

The boAt marketing strategy is always on top for its digital marketing campaigns. They never fail when it comes to aggressive social media marketing campaigns that often include celebrity endorsements, social media influencer partnerships, and innovative marketing initiatives like community building.

image source: Shark Tank India

Rock with boAt challenge

This is one the most recent challenges of boAt that has reached over 1 million people and generated a lot of positive buzz around the brand. A lot of celebrities and influencers were seen wearing their wireless earbuds and showing some moves.

More in Everyday

The #MoreInEveryday campaign was a reminder for GenZ, hustlers, and doers about all that they can accomplish with an Alexa on their wrist.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by boAt (@boat.nirvana)

Thanks to this well-rounded approach, boAt quickly became the go-to brand for quality audio products in India. In just four short years, they have gone from selling headphones out of the trunk of a car to becoming a Rs.100 crore company!

Official audio partner for Lakme fashion week

boAt's unique intent to promote itself was evident at the Lakme Fashion Week (2009) in Mumbai, where all models wore BoAt products. BoAt showcased its products in the fashion industry as fashion accessories. Models in the Lakme fashion week wore BoAt products as the only accessories on the stage.

The brand even created a limited edition of their headphones for the Lakme fashion week. In addition, the brand ambassadors were carefully selected based on their face value among millennials, especially those from Bollywood and sports (cricket). Such simple curation allows boAt to stay relevant among their target audience.

Images source: Lakme Fashion week Facebook

Key takeaways from the boAt marketing strategy for Entrepreneurs

One major takeaway from boAt marketing strategy is how one should think of finding market gaps and getting aggressive for winning the market via pricing strategies. Apart from this, here some more marketing strategy lessons to remember:

Establish a personal connection with your audience:

One of the critical things that boAt does well is to establish a personal connection with its audience. This is evident in their social media presence, which is very engaging and relatable. They use a mix of humor "baby ko bass pasand hai" and SERIOUS business advice to connect with their followers, which has helped them build a strong bond with their target market.

Image source: boAt lifestyle

Know your USP

boAt knows its unique selling proposition (USP), and it uses this to its advantage in its marketing efforts. The brand's USP focuses on providing affordable and high-quality audio products, which is reflected in its marketing messages. By communicating this USP clearly to its target market, boAt is able to differentiate itself from other brands in the industry.

Be active on social media

Social media is a powerful platform for promoting businesses, and boAt has leveraged effectively. The brand is active on all major social media platforms, and it uses these platforms to engage with its audience, promote new products, and offer valuable content. This approach has helped boAt build a solid online presence and reach more people with its message.

Use influencers wisely

Influencer marketing can be extremely effective, but it must be done carefully to avoid pitfalls. Boat uses influencers wisely by partnering with relevant influencers who have a genuine connection with the brand's identity.

BoAt captivated the entire electronic gadgets market in just six short years. The company is one of the five largest and top-selling wearable brands worldwide and at present the 1st in India. It has excellent branding strategies. Currently, it concentrates on an intelligent, crisp marketing campaign and effectively use digital platforms to promote their business.

Although there were several pandemics, the brand used different tactics. The boAt marketing strategy has caused other giant companies such as JBL and other audio manufacturers to lower their product prices in a competitive market.

If you are building a consumer brand, you can also check out our other case marketing strategy case studies for Apple in technology space or Nike in wearables brand space for more inspiration.

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boAt Lifestyle

By: Rajiv Lal, Kairavi Dey

boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z…

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• Publication Date: Jul 18, 2022
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boAt began as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics category in 2016 with the aim of bringing affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products and accessories to millennials and Gen-Z customers in India. Born in 2016 with Amazon India as its only sales platform, boAt started selling 'indestructible' connector cables. It moved to personal audio and over time, ventured into newer categories such as wireless audio, home audio, and smartwatches. Each category had custom-designed reasonably priced products supported by strong marketing efforts and a multi-brand ambassador strategy. It soon became one of India's first digitally native brands to record a revenue in excess of $65 million, and the fifth largest wearable company in the world. In early 2022, it brought in experienced executives to take the reins and steer the company on the right path as it prepared to file for an initial public offering. Newly appointed CEO Vivek Gambhir considered the next phase of growth. Would the boAt brand be strengthened by entering new categories? How should they think about leveraging offline channels? And lastly, should boAt consider international expansion?

Jul 18, 2022

Discipline:

Geographies:

Asia, India

Industries:

Consumer electronics, Retail and consumer goods

Harvard Business School

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• > Startups

The Success Story of boAt

• Ritesh Pathak
• Nov 07, 2020

Listening to good music is the best way to treat yourself and if the device you are listening on is a boAt device, it is indeed icing on the cake. Such has been the revolution of this lifestyle brand which provides us affordable, stylish, and good quality consumer electronics . 

The brand offers us a range of products from an extensive catalog of headphones, earphones, speakers, to travel chargers & premium cables. There have been excellent brands in the market that offered a great range of products but the problem with them was that they were either very expensive or looked awful to the eyes. This is where the boAt lifestyle brought-in the revolution. This India based startup has managed to attract customers with its stylish products.

So, in this blog, we will be covering the small but interesting journey of boAt Lifestyle. We will also learn about their products in brief to understand the extension of their catalog. We will also look at their investors and market performance over the years. 

So, to begin with, let us start with the minds and ideas behind this startup. 

What was the idea behind boAt ?

boAt Lifestyle doesn’t boast of a very prevalent history. It is a Delhi-based startup that was started in 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta . The company term itself as a lifestyle brand that deals in fashionable consumer electronics. boAt Lifestyle was started with the sole aim of bringing affordable, durable, and more importantly, ‘fashionable’ audio products and accessories to millennials. 

Having started as a cable manufacturer and seller company, today, it has expanded its catalog. Now it sells a wide variety of fashionable electronic goods ranging from travel chargers and premium cables to headphones, earphones, speakers. The company is steadily growing and extending its services to millions of ‘boAtheads’ (A term the company uses for all its consumers and brand ambassadors). It has been only four years since the journey but the company stands tall with more than 800,000 happy customers.

Founders Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta

One of its founders Aman Gupta was familiar with the electronics trade. He worked for three years (2007-10) in his family business. Before joining the business, he had completed his Chartered Accountancy and worked in Citibank between 2003 and 2006. 

In 2010, he enrolled for a MBA at the Indian School of Business (ISB) which led to his placement at KPMG, the auditing firm. He worked there for a brief period of six months but those were enough to affect him. He was fascinated by electronics and gadgets and applied at JBL. The company signed him for two years. Gupta managed the start-up’s offline distribution through stores such as Croma and Reliance Digital. A little later, he also got into product management. His job was to identify the right products for the Indian market. His learnings while working for JBL came in handy during product developments at boAt. 

The importance of this story will be understood as we move further.

“We are like Zara of electronics, not highly-priced like luxury brands or cheap like Chinese products” - Sameer Mehta, Co-founder, boAt

Investors and market performance of the company over the years

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 . 

The company is continuously performing in the market. It has clocked more than Rs 100 crore in domestic sales alone. From just two founders, the company is now a 35-member team and has its offices in the top two metro cities- Mumbai and Delhi. 

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. That is more than three times growth year on year. The young consumer electronics player claims that it now sells over 6,000 units per day with four units sold every minute. 

It also adds one boAthead to its family every three minutes. boAt is now projecting sales of Rs 500 crore over the next five years. boAt audio was ranked as the leading brand in the ear wear segment, as per the market data released by leading IT market research and advisory firm International Data Corporation (IDC) .

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. 

In its initial days, boAt sold its products mainly on e-commerce platforms- Amazon and Flipkart. Today, the company is present in 5,000 retail stores, supported by 20 distributors. The company claims to be selling 10,000 units a day and four million units per year . It says it has served more than 20 million Indians till now.   

(Referred blog: The journey of Dream 11- The Title Sponsors of IPL 2020 )

Reasons behind their success

There is no single mantra for success. It 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. So, let’s discuss them. 

Why is boAt successful? 

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. 

Sanjeev Mehta said, “The Apple cable used to break near the charging end (near the connectors). People used to make do, by taping over it. So we launched a tough, braided cable, with a life cycle of 10,000 bends”. 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. 

“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

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.

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; its sales were expected to hit 200 million to 300 million in 2019. 

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 )

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. It is interesting because, as mentioned above in the blog, Aman was a former employee at JBL. 

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 he is hopeful to come out of the pandemic strongly and regain the momentum. 

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My PM Interview - Product Manager Interview Question Answers

Business Case Study: The Marketing Strategy which turned Boat into a 1500CR Company

Here is the business case study explaining the marketing strategies which turned boat into a 1500 cr company..

Boat is one of the most incredible brands in the Indian startup ecosystem and the most astonishing thing about this company is that within just five years they have achieved such a strong position in the market that if you look at the True Wireless Stereo (TWS) market as of Q3 of 2021 while Boult stands at 5.3% , Noise stands at 7.7% , Realme stands at 8.1% , Boat stands way ahead with a market share of 35.8% which is literally more than the next three competitors combined.

On top of that, the revenue of the company has already crossed Rs.1500 Crores in FY-2021 and the profits have already shot up by 61% since FY-2020.

Now considering the fact that Boat is now going for an IPO, the question is,

How did Boat achieve such an extraordinary position in the crowded hearable market of India,

What exactly was their business strategy, and

What are the business lessons that we need to learn from Mr.Aman Gupta (CoFounder) and his wonderful team at Boat.

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One of the most important reasons for Boat’s success is its genius Market Positioning and if you look at the rise of Boat it is very very similar to the rise of OnePlus phones in India.

Many of you must have seen that there was a time when the OnePlus brand was just one of the most functional underrated brands in India and it was only popular among tech enthusiasts but suddenly with the launch of OnePlus 7, the OnePlus tag became one of the most popular brands in India and you could literally see OnePlus 7 phones everywhere in 2019.

In fact, at one point in 2019, OnePlus was selling more phones than Apple and Samsung combined. Now the question is in spite of the phone market being so crowded with Vivo , Oppo , Samsung , Huawei , and Apple , how did OnePlus become a legend.

The answer to this question lies in this pricing chart,

Now if you look at the pricing of phones in India back in 2019, you will see that iPhone was the costliest with the pricing of Rs.85K+, then we had Samsung S10 priced at Rs.55K+ and then straight away we had Oppo, Vivo, and other companies that were primarily focused on selling phones below Rs.25,000.

Now although they had costlier phones, in India, the focus of these companies was more on Rs.25,000 and below price range. Now you see, there is a huge gap that's left out between Rs.25,000 to Rs.55,000 rupees which was only being addressed by Samsung then. As we all know Samsung phones do not offer as much value for money as their counterparts and this audience was the most premium unaddressed audience that was left untapped.

Here's where we saw the rise of two phones, one was Xiaomi MI 9 and Rs.31,000 and OnePlus 7 that was priced at Rs.35,000 and both these phones positioned themselves exactly in between Rs.25K to Rs.55K price range and they both had insane specs and offered way more value for money as compared to Samsung phones.

Now the question is why didn't MI 9 become a market leader like OnePlus?

Well, that is because OnePlus built a crazy level of aspirational value for its brand by getting endorsed by Robert Downey JR .

Everybody knows what an insane fan base Robert Downey JR has in India and this aspirational value is something where Xiaomi lagged because of which OnePlus won a huge market share in India in 2019.

Now, how is all this related to Boat and what does OnePlus positioning have to do with Boat?

Well if you look closely after Apple introduced the AirPods in 2016 three important things happened in the exact same year,

There was a sudden boost in the fascination of wireless earphones.

The JIO wave hit India in 2016 that led to the skyrocketing of the screen time of Indians.

Most importantly many phone manufacturers stopped shipping earphones along with their smartphones and if they did these earphones were the most basic versions in the market.

All these three factors created a huge market for hearable in India so from 2017-18 onwards many companies started jumping into the wearables market and if you look at the pricing charts of the most popular brands in 2018 this is what it looks like,

First, we had the ultra-premium wireless earphones category wherein we had Bose and Apple that had a base price of Rs.17K and Rs.15K respectively. Then in the premium category that is between Rs.10K to 15K, we had only JBL as a significant brand with its pod version being priced at Rs.10K. Then for sub-premium that is between Rs.5K to Rs.10K we had Sennheiser's wireless earphones that started from Rs.6,400 onwards and below this price point that is below 5000 there was no giant brand and yet there was a huge demand for wireless earphones in India.

This is where we saw four brands come in MIVI priced at Rs.3K to 4K, SkullCandy priced at Rs.2000+ we had Boat at Rs.1999 and then we had Noise priced atRs.3999, and then we had several local brands including Boult that were priced at Rs.999 and below.

Now the question, is with these four competitive brands what was so special about Boat that it is now the market leader by such a huge margin.

Well, there are two specific reasons for that,

Firstly, while SkullCandy was only popular among enthusiasts and among a very limited segment of the audience, the other brands like MIVI and Boult were barely known in the market. Whereas Boat had become far more popular because they had roped in Hardik Pandya in 2018 and this is where the power of celebrity endorsement comes in, just like Robert Downey JR 's endorsement brought in an aspirational value for OnePlus. Hardik Pandya's endorsement by default built an aspirational value for Boat as a brand. As a result in the Rs.2000 - Rs.5000 category Boat became far more familiar than its counterparts. Now some people might say, just because some celebrities endorsing why will we buy earphones? We are smart enough to make a good choice without endorsements! . . . Well, that’s not always the case.

A customer knowingly or unknowingly determines the value of a product based on two types of values Tangible Value and Perceived Value.

Tangible value is the real value of the product. As in if the audio sounds great in one earphone it has a great tangible value and Perceived value as the name suggests is basically the judgment that you make based on how the product is portrayed .

The fact about audio devices especially earphones is that only trained ears or only the people who are involved in video editing or sound editing can actually spot the intricate differences in audio whereas the naive ears will not be able to tell the difference in audio quality between two devices, as a result, you can barely spot the difference between two products as a result of the entire audio market from the customer standpoint is practically commoditized and since there is no added tangible value to the product that you can spot the only value by which you will judge an audio product like your phone is by perceived value.

So if I place two earphones one of some random brand and the other that is being endorsed by Hardik Pandya, you are more likely to trust the latter than the former. Even if you are not a diehard Hardik Pandya fan so the only delta that inclines you to purchase a product like your phone is the perceived value of the product.

This is the reason why Boat obsessively focuses on presenting itself as a lifestyle brand to build an aspirational value for itself both with endorsements and design.

So after Hardik Pandya, they also roped in Rishabh Pant , Shikhar Dhawan , Bhumra, and Prithvi Shaw 2019 followed by Neha Kakkar , Kiara Advani, and Karthik Aryan after that they also signed up Shreyas Iyer and Diljit Dosanjh in 2020.

Boat also collaborated with celebrity designer Masaba Gupta to launch a limited-edition collection of spunky headphones at the Lakme Fashion Week 2020 and now they're also collaborating with BIRA which is again one of the favorite millennial brands in India.

This is how just like OnePlus was able to present itself as a far more premium and familiar product as compared to Xiaomi MI 9. Boat through its collaborations has been able to build the same aspiration value to stand out from the rest of the crowd.

Even today at the entry level in the earphones market boat is still priced at a bare minimum of Rs.299 because of which a student is more likely to buy a boat and when he loves it three years later after he graduates when his purchase power increases he is more likely to buy a Boat product.

This is how by building a Quality Product, by choosing a wonderful Time to Enter the Market, by Standing Out from the rest of the competition through lifestyle marketing and through strategic collaborations, Mr.Aman Gupta and team have turned Boat into a market leader in the hearable segment of the Indian market.

Lessons from the Case Study :

Whenever you launch a product in a crowded market always try to figure out how you are going to differentiate yourself in the presence of the big brands.

Celebrity endorsements although looks like a cash drain in some cases even today it could be a game-changer in a crowded commoditized market.

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boAt Case Study and Marketing Strategy

boAt is often regarded as India’s fastest growing audio & wearables brand. The company has become really popular in the last few years and gained further recognition when one of its co-founders, Aman Gupta, appeared as a “shark” in Sony TV’s smash hit show “Shark Tank India”. Reports suggest that the sales of boAt headphones have gone further up a notch, courtesy of the investment-raising show that had rocked the TRP charts and social media trends in early 2022.

I this post, we will ‘dive’ into boAt and take a detailed look at the company and its marketing strategies through a thorough case study.

Table of Contents

A Brief History of boAt

boAt began its journey in the year 2016 when co-founders Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta decided to offer fashionable audio products at a price never seen or heard before. The two co-founders started out with a capital of INR 30 crore. BoAt wanted to create value for the users so they started looking to solve common problems reported by the youth. It was the time when Apple users were suffering because of their charger getting damaged without any apparent reason. So they decided to make Apple charger that could withstand wear and tear for long, and they were quite successful at that.

Later, the company went on to add a number of quality products such as earbuds, headphones, smart watches, wireless speakers, etc to its product range. As of December 2020, boAt was already selling 14,000+ products in India every single day. BoAt’s both audio and wearable range offer top-notch quality whilst keeping the price affordable. Established audio electronics brands like JBL had to drop down their prices in order to stay relevant in the target industry.

boAt Funding

• Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures invested INR 60 crore in boAt in the year 2018
• Warburg Pincus, a New York-based private equity fund invested $100 million in boAt for a significant minority stake
• The company raised INR 50 crore from Qualcomm Ventures at a valuation of INR 2,200 crore

boAt Revenue and Marketing Performance

The company struggled in the first two years of its operation (2016-2018), mainly because of the lack of funding. However, once the company raised INR 6 crores from Fireside ventures, there was no looking back. According to filings with the Registrar of Companies, boAt’s FY2018 revenues grew by 4 times to INR 108 crore.

Fast forward FY-2019, boAt became the leading ear wear brand with a 27.3% market share. In FY 2020, the fashionable audio brand generated revenue of INR 500 crore. This was a staggering 108% increase from 239 crore in FY 2019.

When boAt started off, it was just available on popular E-commerce stores like Amazon and Flipkart. However, its products are now available in 5,000+ retail stores. boAt has reportedly served more than 20 million customers so far!

boAt Marketing Strategies

The company knows just too well the likes and dislikes of their target audience and the places they visit often- social media, Google, gym, etc. In a nutshell, boAt has targeted the youth of the nation very well as can be seen from the below mentioned marketing strategies:

1) Presenting itself as a lifestyle brand

boAt has never portrayed itself as a consumer electronics company. Rather, it has always taken immense pride in presenting itself as a lifestyle accessories brand. Doing so creates an image in the mind of the user that boAt products can be used at all places whether you are sweating in the gym, or commuting in a bus.

This intent of the company was also visible at the Lakme Fashion Week (2009) in Mumbai, where all the models sported only boAt products.

2) Digital Marketing

Over the years, the company has spent a lot of money on online marketing, as they have targeted the youth. BoAt has mainly run its campaigns on Google and social networking websites like Facebook and Instagram. Interestingly, all customers of boAt are referred to as ‘boAtheads’. The company has also appointed youth icons such as Kiara Advani to win the trust of the customers.

3) Expanding Range of Products

Some companies launch a product, gain success and then fizzle out as they fail to expand their catalo. Expanding your product range over the years is a good marketing strategy in itself and boAt has been exceptional at that. The company first made indestructible apple charging cables and chargers. Tasting success, they did not stop at that introduced ear phones, which was followed by wireless speakers and headphones. With this continuous, well-thought expansion, they were able to capture a large share of the market, owing to which its popularity grew by leaps and bounds.

4) The Perfect Targeting

boAt products offer affordability without cutting down on style. This was not a common thing 7 or so years ago, when the market had either premium brands or cheap ones that did not offer an X-factor. The blend of two was rare. BoAt addressed that gap with its products that attracted the youth. The brand ambassadors were also carefully chosen which had a great face value among the millennials, especially from industries such as Bollywood and Sports (Cricket). In terms of quality of the ear wear, the products could be worn without any fear of damaging them even while gymming or performing high-intensity exercise in the outdoors.

boAt has made a huge name for itself in the last 4 years. It’s reputation and popularity was bolstered after the appearance of one of its co-founders, Aman Gupta, on Shark Tank India season 1. On the marketing, pricing and styling front, the company has left no stone unturned in outsmarting the existing competition. The impact has been such that renowned brands like JBL had to cut down on its prices in order to stay relevant in the industry.

The future of the company looks quite promising, courtesy of a dedicated R&D team, millions in funding and the zeal to stay appealing to the youth. Notably, Aman Gupta’s present net worth is INR 10,500 crore.

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The One Liner

Boat marketing strategy case study that can blow your mind, diptaraj bhaduri.

March 2, 2023. 2 minute Read

The wearable electronics marketplace in India was already competitive, with more than 200+ brands lethally competing against each other to take over the Indian market. The reason behind this was the massive size of the Indian market with a young population whose average age is 27+ years. The BoAt was an underdog when it started, but over time, it has become one of the most used and profitable brands in the wearable electronics market sector of India.

BoAt is an Indian company founded in 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta which sells audio-focused electronic products like wireless speakers, earbuds, wired and wireless headphones, home audio gear, premium rugged cables, and a variety of other tech accessories. 

According to a report from 2022, the company started out as a cable manufacturer and seller before quickly expanding into other markets currently has a market share of 32.1% keeping brands like Mivi and Realme far behind.

History of BoAt company

BoAt with the motive to provide millennials and Gen-Z customers in India with cost-effective, durable, and stylish audio goods and accessories, launched as a lifestyle brand in the consumer electronics sector in 2016. Born in 2016, boAt began offering connector cables on Amazon India as its sole channel of revenue. Slowly they then entered into markets of personal audio before sliding into more recent areas like wireless audio, home audio, and smartwatches. The products of boAt are Well designed and reasonably priced in each category and are also backed by aggressive marketing campaigns and a multi-brand ambassador strategy. BoAt now asserts that four devices are sold every minute, or 6,000 units per day. The successful story of boAt made Aman Gupta popular as a marketing genius. It quickly rose to become the fifth-largest wearable business in the world and one of India’s first digitally native brands to record revenues of over $65 million and this success made boAt marketing strategies a talk of the town for all other entrepreneurs who are also trying to stand out in their respective market defeating all their rival brands. 

Success story of BoAt

BoAt concentrates on establishing a quality relationship with its customers in which it views the customers as members of the boAt family, the customer service that boAt provides actually makes their customer feel a bit more special. Also their quality marketing tactics which make them seen everywhere. The products of boAt were made affordable, enduring, and fashionable as the founders thought to make their wearables more attractive to the young customer base of India. They also put a lot of emphasis on the boAt brand and portrayed it as an Indian one using the face of different Indian celebrities. Because Indians are huge fans of both cricket and Bollywood movies, boAt chose to use these cricketers and bollywood stars there as brand ambassadors for the company’s marketing efforts. With affordable pricing and appealing designs, all of these helped the business build a sizable customer base and become a billion-dollar company in India.

Marketing Strategies that BoAt used to capture the market

1. boat used the opportunity quite well..

In 2016, India was changing at a rapid rate, jio has just the Indian market and people have started using the internet at peak. At that time there was a high need to wearables in the market as most mobile phone companies stopped giving a headphone with their mobile sets and the other options were premium companies such as Apple, JBL, and Bose but there was no affordable brand for the majority of population and there’s where boAt saw an opportunity and used it to fullest.

2. Celebrity endorsements

boAt marketing strategies were insane and one of the strongest pillars of their marketing strategy is celebrity endorsements. From cricketers like Hardik Pandya and Rishabh Pant to bollywood celebrities like Kartik Aryan and Kiara Advani, a lot of these celebrities worked as the brand ambassador of boat which made it highly popular among young Indians especially through internet.

3. BoAt featured itself more as lifestyle brand

More than just a normal wearables electronic brand which makes earphones and earpods boAt decided to become a lifestyle brand for the young generation. They even collaborated with different top fashion designers in Lakme fashion week. The cool and funky designs of the headphones attracted many young Indian customers. 

4. Strong Online presence

It’s a well known fact now that if you want to win in the modern world then you need to be able to make your presence felt on social media platforms. boAt ran a lot of social media marketing campaigns and stayed away from traditional media which is also a big reason why young Indians prefer boAt over every other brand. A report says that social media plays a very important role in shaping the purchasing decisions of GenZ.

Final thoughts

We at The One Liner also wish to see you as a successful business person someday. Aman Gupta has already inspired thousands of entrepreneurs in India trying to build something from scratch. Even Aman Gupta claims that Boat has been profitable since day 1. And as per the Economic times, BoAt has seen a solid year-to-year rise in profits and revenue in the financial year 2020. These days, when every company is looking more for funding and talks less about Profit, Boat is the only startup that can inspire many on how to create a profitable business that targets mostly Genz and Millenials.

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The success story & business model of boat.

Harsh Hingu

Created on 23 May 2022

Wraps up in 6 Min

Read by 46k people

Updated on 08 Nov 2023

What comes to mind when we hear  ‘Earphones’ ?  Think think? Today, we will be talking about a brand that didn’t even exist a few years ago & now it is the market leader in the audio segment. You guessed it right, BoAt it is!

Before diving into how BoAt started, let us understand the market conditions where BoAt targets millennials & people in their early 20s. 

In the year 2018 alone, more than 60 lakhs students graduated, and almost all of them own a mobile phone in cities for which they require an earphone, so BoAt cleverly tried to seize the opportunity.

Due to the emergence of work from home, where every working individual wants to attend a meeting, there is a need for earphones & here also BoAt captured this opportunity very well.

So now let’s plug into nirvana 🥳 & decode the BoAt story & how it became one of the top wearable brands worldwide.

How BoAt Started

Aman Gupta was a CA & has worked with Citi Bank as an Assistant Manager. He was keenly interested in Marketing, so he joined JBL in 2012 as Sales Head.

He fell in love with the audio industry & wanted to do something of his own. With his friend Sameer Mehta, Aman & Sameer started boAt lifestyle in 2014. They bootstrapped BoAt by investing 30 lakhs from their wealth. 

Initially, they saw a problem: Iphone's charging cable used to break easily owing to its poor quality, so they started selling unbreakable charging cables for iPhones. 

They decided to go through e-commerce and started selling on Amazon & Flipkart. Aman & Sameer succeeded as no other company was selling quality cable at such a low price.

But Aman & Sameer were ambitious as Aman had previously worked in JBL, so he had a deeper insight into the audio industry. A massive gap existed in the market as no branded product was available at a low price & even if it did exist, they were not providing good quality products. The Gap In The Market

So initially, when no brand existed in the economy/affordable market. Some cheap Chinese products existed, but they were not up to the mark as the products they were selling were of low quality & people were not interested in buying them. So, here is BoAt to save all of us. On that note, let's discuss its business model.

Business Model of BoAt

BoAt sells various products from wired earphones to wireless ones, from speakers to headphones & from smartwatches to trimmers. BoAt lifestyle has a market share of 27.3% in the earwear category & it is the leading brand in this category.

It earned a revenue of ₹1,531 crores & the profit was around ₹127.1 crores in FY2021. Its earnings grew by 61% from ₹48.85 crores in FY20 to ₹78.6 crores in FY21.

BoAt focuses on selling wired earphones at the lowest prices possible. Their products are priced between ₹350 to ₹550 as no brand sells wired earphones in this price segment.

The company has always created products that have led to demand-pull, which means they don't have to market its launched products. It has already become popular owing to its good quality and low price. 

For example, BoAt launched a portable Bluetooth speaker named  ‘BoAt Stone’  that became an instant hit as they were selling this at around ₹2,000 & other competitors of BoAt were selling the speakers at ₹5,000.

Revenue Breakup of BoAt

Strategies That Helped BoAt Succeed

BoAt lifestyle has become one of the top 5 wearable brands globally. Let us know what made them one of the top wearable companies in the world.

Online Approach

Initially, it started selling online as it is easier to manage the distribution & sale of products that way. Then slowly, with time, they entered the offline market because, in small cities & rural India, people were still buying these products from nearby retail shops.

Outsourcing The Manufacturing

The main issue was they didn’t have the expertise to manufacture good quality earphones in India. So they decided to outsource the manufacturing to Chinese companies as China is the electronics manufacturing hub. So they solely focused on designing the product & building the brand with marketing & sales.  

Focusing On Affordability

“Indians want products at a logical price. We didn’t price our products very high or very low we sold products at the right price” - Aman Gupta.

₹100 ki cheez ko ₹500 mai leke khud ko cool samajne waalo!!!!! Hell has a special place for you. 

BoAt priced their products very low in the branded category & today; we can see they sell good quality products at the lowest possible prices. Both Aman & Sameer knew that most Indians are middle class & they wanted branded earphones at low prices.

Upping The Bass

“Baby ko bass pasand hai”  😋. Indians loved the bass when listening to music, so they added more bass to their wearable products & this alone was the factor that improved the product's quality.

Lifestyle Marketing

BoAt marketed itself as a lifestyle company & a fashion brand for Genz & millennials, not as a boring electronics company just trying to sell an earphone.

Great Customer Service

They focused on good customer service if a product comes under the warranty; the BoAt has started a new service where the customer will get the home delivery of the product. 

Impressed with the success story of boAt Lifestyle? Then, delve into similar examples of impressive success approaches that made the best brands in India today.

Future Plans of BoAt

The company is rapidly expanding its product line as they have gained a good market share in the wearable audio market & now they are also focusing on personal care & smartwatches. 

It has acquired two companies named Tagg & KaHa. KaHa is a Singapore-based smart wearable IoT(Internet of Things) development startup. With this acquisition, BoAt can continue building innovative products.

Tagg digital is an Indian consumer electronics startup founded in 2016 & it deals in smartwatches, earphones, and speakers. It was a pure bootstrapped company started by Rohit Dhingra, Amitesh Bharadwaj, and Saurav Prakash & didn’t raise capital to date.

Challenges BoAt Is Facing

Imported Products

Most of the BoAt products are made in China with third-party manufacturers & in 2020, due to the India-China dispute & covid-19, the companies are facing many issues in importing the products from China. So to solve this issue, under the PLI scheme, they have set up a 50:50 joint venture with Dixon technologies to manufacture some boAt products in India. 

But even this will not resolve the issue in the short term as it is costly to manufacture in India & even by 2024, around 50% of the BoAt products will be made in China.  

Cutthroat Competition & No After-Warranty Service

There is too much in this space as new-age startups exist, and even traditional companies are stepping up in this category. The competitors of BoAt are Mivi, Skullcandy, Noise, pTron, Xiaomi, Samsung, etc. Also, if a product has issues after the warranty period expires, even if a customer is ready to pay the extra money, boAt currently does not offer after-warranty service.

Imagine Marketing, the parent company of BoAt filed a DRHP with SEBI earlier in 2022. The DHRP consists of an issue size of ₹2,000 crores, where it is now expected to seek a valuation of 1.5 - 2 billion dollars this year.  IPO will be a mix of fresh stock issues & an offer for sale. It is expected that Imagine Marketing will IPO before the end of this year.

The Bottom Line

Even in this hyper-competitive space where the established traditional payers exist, boAt did well. In such a short time, it has earned one-fourth market share in the wearable industry. As there are many challenges as well for BoAt, only time will tell if BoAt will continue to grow 😎 or BoAt will sink 🤔.

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'BoAt' Becomes A Case Study At Harvard University; Entrepreneur Aman Gupta Pens An Inspiring Note

Aman Gupta, the co-founder of boAt Lifestyle and famed Shark Tank India judge, has repeatedly proved that anything is possible in this world with dedication and effort. The entrepreneur posted a lengthy note sharing how Harvard University is researching his audio and wearables brand. 

He wrote a message on Instagram and shared a photo of him standing outside Harvard Business School. 

"Harvard Nahee Jaa sake to Kya hua ... apna kaam our apnee company pahucha dee (So what if I couldn't go to Harvard. My work and company got me there.)"

Sharing his pride, Gupta added, 

View this post on Instagram

"We are really proud to share that Harvard Business School has written a case study on boAt. Today, Sameer and I were here talking to the students and the faculty about the case which was presented to the students. "

He recalled his time when he studied various case studies from a prestigious university. 

"I have studied Harvard case studies which have helped me. I am hopeful our case study will help many students learn and grow worldwide," he added.

He posted a picture of the Harvard Business School report along with the note.

Aman's heartwarming note has received comments due to the popularity of the internet.

Aman Gupta gained popularity after he appeared as one of the Sharks (mentors) on Shark Tank India.

Shark Tank India's latest season. The show's creators on Tuesday posted a teaser for it in which a vegetable seller is seen advising his customer on how a business operates using terms like equity and income.

The caption again for the advertisement stated, "Ab pura India business ki sahi value samjhega! 💸 #SharkTankIndiaSeason2 coming soon, on Sony Entertainment Television #SharkTankIndiaSeason2onSony."

The first season of Shark Tank India, which debuted last year, became an instant hit among the audience, with the ‘Sharks’ or judges on the show becoming hot favorites of the audience.

(With ANI inputs)

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boat case study ppt

All aboard the BOAT case study

The only boat that would not sink is the Indian company boAt. We all have heard about this company, especially after seeing its co-founder Aman Gupta on the popular TV show Shark Tank India. So, today we will discuss what keeps this boat afloat, i.e., the boAt case study.  Often regarded as India’s fastest-growing audio …

All aboard the BOAT case study Read More »

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