There’s no doubt that music is the best way to boost the mood. Quite frankly listening to music even in public place or while travelling has been a normal activity, so for that we cannot carry a music system rather we carry headphones, earphones, wireless headphone-earphones or small portable speaker.
Although there were many brands selling earphones, headphones or speakers for quite some time in India only a few of them were Indian brands. Also, the range of products marketed and sold by those brands were not so much of “value for money”.
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Start of the journey
BOAT is a lifestyle brand deals with fashionable electronic products for the consumers. The brand started by Aman Gupta along with Sameer Mehta in the year 2016.
Aman Gupta, co-founder and CMO of boat pursued his bachelor’s degree in commerce from Delhi University. From 2007-2010 he got indulged in his family business before joining the business he completed his CA. In 2010 he enrolled for MBA in Finance at the Indian School of Business (ISB). He started as an assistant manager with Citi bank, then he joined KPMG, an audit firm as an Senior Management, Aman then went on to join JBL and handled the offline operations of the brand, that came handy when he founded BOAT.
Samer Mehta, co-founder and the CPO of Boat. He started his career at Redwood Interactive and also was the owner of the company. He also co-founded Imagine Marketing Pvt. Ltd.
With the aim to revolutionize Indian market both the founders started the company with a capital of only RS 300000 from their own pockets. A brand that started in Aman’s garage went on to become biggest lifestyle brand in India.
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What makes boAt different from their competition
There are many ways Boat is different from their rival brands one of them being their main focus on innovation, quality and the introduction of new products quite often to keep themselves trendy and up to date.
Secondly, they have a very good marketing team and strategy to keep the buzz around the brand all the time. The two most popular things in India are Bollywood and cricket as a marketing plan boat markets their brand and products through Bollywood actors and cricketers which proved to be a grant success.
Thirdly, their approach to keep the price of their products under a considerate budget give customers true value for money.
Finally with their customer-oriented approach and their and customer support make them standout from other brands that were already present in the market.
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Target Market
Boat is reckoned as an millennials’ brand and the styling and marketing is mainly focused to attract the youths. Boat has picked all the brand ambassadors from the country’s most followed obsession, cricket and Bollywood. The company specially creates products like TWS earphones, Bluetooth earphones, bass earphones, headphones, smart watches, Bluetooth speakers, etc. with cool and fancy designs to attract more millennials.
Funding and Investors
Till date boat has raised a total funding of $116.3 million over 6 funding rounds. The latest funding was raised on April, 2021 from a Series B funding round. Boat is funded by 5 investors, Qualcomm Ventures and Warburg Pincus being the most recent ones. Boat has 2 acquisitions the most recent was KaHa Pte on January 2020.
Boat is looking forward to launch an IPO very soon this year. The company is currently looking to raise a fund of $500 million at a valuation of $1.4 Billion and wanting to list somewhat before June 2022. According to close sources of the company, Boat is looking to have a fresh issue of shares and to going to put forward an offer to sale, as per reports that would be 1000 crore each.
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boAt- Future Plans
Boat is currently aiming to increase its catalogue and provide more and more products to satisfy its customers. Boat believes there is an increase trend of buying earphones along with smartphones. This could be a possible way to channelize company’s success and growth. As per reports many smartphone brands like Samsung, Apple are already in talks for a partnership with JBL and Beats respectively. Like rest of the competitors Boat is also working to make a relationship towards a tie up with smartphone brands.