Case Study Learning: How Did boAt Become a 1500 Crore Company?
India has a huge market for literally everything. But at a quick glance, you’ll see a lot of noise that makes it excruciating for brands to make a stand. Brands that have made proper use of market research & execution to build an empire are rare. You learn about a lot of start-ups that emerge as mushrooms every year, but the ratio of the start-ups that emerge as unicorns (get the much-coveted billion-dollar valuation) is pretty slim.
So, in this blog, we bring you a story of a company that became successful not through crazy ideas and blind leaps, but through thorough market research & perfect timing. We’re talking about an audio device brand that dared to enter the market when it was dominated by big players from Bose & Sennheiser to JBL & Skull Candy. It still managed to carve a niche for itself and get hold of the majority of the audience. We’re talking about the company founded by Aman Gupta & Sameer Mehta called boAt.
Let’s Get the Facts Straight
Truly Wireless Stereo or as it is fondly called as TWS earphones are the talk of the town right now. And in the 2021’s Q3 of the TWS market, Realme stands at 7.7% market share, Noise takes up to 7.5%, pTron is at 6% while boAt is miles ahead in the race with a whopping 39.3%! Moreover, its Year on Year growth was calculated at 187.9% last year. These numbers are astonishingly more than all the three competitors combined together.
On top of that, the revenue of boAt has crossed ₹1500 crores in revenue in FY21. But how did boAt, a start-up that was founded in 2016 & was comparatively late, beat all its competitors in the race?
Cue in the Success Story!
2016 was a very interesting year. Yes, boAt was founded in 2016 but we are not talking about that. We are talking about the perfect timing that boAt took advantage of. But there was not one event that snowballed this inception. There were multiple. Let’s get on to that.
First, 2016 was the year when Apple launched its first generation of AirPods. And the first case study lesson is that Apple is near to god when it comes to marketing (even when they don’t have anything new to offer, but this time they did!). So of course the entire world gobbled up TWS earphones as the next big thing in technology. The demand shot up like SpaceX rockets and everybody needed a pair of AirPods ASAP!
Second, India’s digital boom with the internet started in 2016 as Jio entered the telecom market. Mass hysteria commenced when Jio provided internet at dirt cheap rates. That increased the multimedia screen time of Indian users overall. This ensured that people were now inclined to look for good earphones that help them in consuming their content.
Third, in a bid to allegedly decrease their carbon footprint on the world, phone manufacturers started excluding earphones in new boxes. This made consumers look for alternatives. And if someone is going to spend money on earphones, they would obviously choose the latest TWS earphones. But the prime requirement of Indian consumers is affordability.
Thus, the market, which already was building a huge demand for TWS earphones, saw the inception of a swadeshi, funky, millennial-targeted & great marketing-infused company. Yep, you guessed it right. It was boAt.
Reason Behind the Success
In India, people might go all-in while buying smartphones but they don’t want to break the bank for their earphones. Because obviously, they are getting more value out of a smartphone. And to be realistic, unless one is a music connoisseur, it’s difficult to catch the minute differences between premium & affordable sub-premium earphones. Given a choice, Indian consumers will always be inclined towards affordable sub-premium earphones.
That’s why boAt positioned its products in the range that 90% of Indian consumers want: economical and affordable pricing. This decision came after months of a rigorous research of the Indian market that was congruent to demand. After being sure of the target audience, boAt put the mast on and sailed ahead full speed to R&D, production and then launch!
But there are so many players out there in the affordable earphones market. How did boAt manage to hold 35.8% market shares? That’s where the company’s “Brahmastra” celebrity endorsement came in handy.
Endorsed by Top Fam
In 2018, boAt roped in Hardik Pandya in their initial campaign ads. This built an aspirational value for the brand. boAt didn’t stop its winning celebrity formula there. After Hardik Pandya, they got many other celebrities such as Jasprit Bumrah, Shreyas Iyer, Rishab Pant, Shikhar Dhawan & Prithvi Shaw; singers like Guru Randhawa, Diljit Dosanjh & Neha Kakkar; actors like Kiara Advani and Kartik Aaryan.
boAt’s marketing communication became so good that it sold around 59 lakhs units of TWS earphones in 2021. And that’s how boAt became the king of the affordable range. It’s probably one of the fastest & profitable start-ups India has produced.
If boAt arrived in 2016 yet still managed to conquer the TWS earphone bazaar, your brand can do the same. And who knows, with the right marketing agency backing you with perfect marketing research and communication, you might do better than boAt!
