"Bhaiya boAt hain?"
BoAt lifestyle becomes the second largest wearables company GLOBALLY. This is how they started out.
On Saturday morning 31/3/2024, boAt shook the whole nation with the following newspaper ad.
“Think Different” is apple’s tagline XD.
I've been closely observing the groundbreaking work Aman Gupta and his team are doing at boAt. They're truly challenging norms. These kinds of people who bring waves are known as “disrupters” in the marketing realm.
The inspiring journey of how Aman started boAt is remarkable in itself, but what's truly awe-inspiring is how he has consistently competed against giants like JBL, Bose, and Sony, remaining relevant in the industry for so long.
Forget competing, they've recently surged past all their rivals to claim the title of the 2nd largest seller of lifestyle goods in India just before Apple.
okay, in terms of sales..Apple might be bigger in India, but…
boAt is the real king. Coming up is why.
boAt started out in 2016. Aman Gupta the co-founder and CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) at boAt had a lot of failed startups prior to starting to boAt.
In several interviews, he has revealed that his mother-in-law was often apprehensive about her daughter marrying a man who had no job and was now attempting to start a new business after several failed ventures.
Initially raising a capital of 30 lakh rupees from all co-founders, the business was bootstrapped. For those unfamiliar, a 'bootstrapped' business is one that did not borrow any funds from external investors but instead grew organically through the founders investing the necessary capital.
Initially, they sold cables to companies, but soon shifted their focus to lifestyle products. Aman revealed that he felt like crying and collapsing to the ground when he saw someone wearing his headphones. (Now, the entire nation wears them, but that's a different story ;))
by the fourth year of releasing lifestyle products they had reached 3,000cr in net revenue (FY2022). The company became a unicorn by July 2022.
The reason it was so successful is this -
Between 2000 and 2015, before boAt entered the market, there were no lifestyle products offering quality headphones in the price range of 500-2000 rupees. This is the common man’s budget for something like a headphone in India.
Companies such as Sony, JBL, and Bose were considerably more expensive being in the price range of 5,000rs to anywhere beyond 30k Rs. and smaller companies remained confined to their niche.
This is where boAt captured the market. in fact 33% of it!!
One of my favorite content creators in the marketing space: Alex Hormozi states something on the lines of -
“Its easy to make a lot of money in business. Just find something that people want, find a way to manufacture it at a cheaper cost while not terribly compromising on quality and sell in abundance.”
Ladies and gents, this is EXACTY what boAt did.
let me tell you a fun marketing technique boAt used in its initial days to market the product lol.
This is Aman’s wife:
This is his mother:
On an interview he revealed that he would send his mother and wife to stores and make them ask the store owner -
“Bhaiya boAt earphones hain kya?”
When the store owners would say “no”, he would make them come again and ask for it, cultivating a sense of desire for the product in the market.
I'm not suggesting that this single-handedly sparked a major market revolution for boAt, but employing such techniques undoubtedly contributed, and it's inspiring to see how they began on a humble scale.
I’m always a firm believer that adverts can only get you so far.
And that word of mouth is the best form of marketing.
boAt has definitely won both the word of mouth and at innovative ad creation.
Guys,
I’ll let you go now.
But take these lessons from boAT’s success story.
Just understand what people want and give it to them :)
Just because there are competitors doesn’t mean people wont try and buy your product.
Always Overdeliver. Provide customers something they cannot say no to for a price they are paying.