Audio and wearables brand, boAt has scaled up to approximately $500 million (Rs 4,000 crore) in net sales in FY22-23. The venture claims that this milestone has been achieved on the back of its sustained #1 presence in India’s audio category.
boAt further claims that it has also established a leadership position in the hyper-growth wearables category with a distinctive and unique strategy to pursue a software play through its recently acquired KaHa platform and creating a one-of-its-kind health and wellness wearables ecosystem within its product portfolio.
On the audio side, partnerships with leading global companies like Qualcomm (who is also an investor in the company), Dolby, and Dirac has helped boAt bring leading global technology to consumers. This, coupled with its in-house Research and development (R&D) facility, boAt Labs, which has co-engineered next-generation hearables products with global tech companies, has enabled boAt to offer a best-in-class immersive and premium audio experience.
Furthermore, significant investments in alternative channels, including notably offline, has helped boAt gain added strength in the category.
In the wearables category, this digital first brand is pursuing a distinctive strategy of investing significantly in its software and homegrown app, which is a unique versus other peers in the segment. Its acquisition of KaHa last year (a world-class wearables technology platform) has enabled it to create a homegrown consumer app and features specifically tailored for Indian consumers and use cases.
Through this strategy, boAt expects to be the only Indian player who will have a truly integrated end-to-end stack of hardware and software and a homegrown consumer app enabling it to offer a truly distinctive offering to Indian consumers.
Also, over the past few years, boAt has made significant investments in the local Indian manufacturing ecosystem, with today most of its audio and wearables products being manufactured in India via several Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) players, including Dixon, with whom boAt has also created a manufacturing JV. In FY2023 alone, around 15 million products were made in India by boAt.
Sameer Mehta, co-founder and CEO, boAt said, “We are continuing to make significant strides in establishing ourselves as a dominant lifestyle brand in the categories in which we play in the Indian ecosystem. Our commitment to ‘Make in India’ remains strong and the rapid pace of our transition to Indian manufacturing and our JV with Dixon Technologies is evidence of that."
"Having raised private equity capital over multiple rounds including from Warburg Pincus, we believe boAt is well positioned and capitalized to continue to make aggressive investments in establishing ourselves as a leading wearables brand in the country, similar to our achievements in the audio category,” boAt CEO added.
According to a report by International Data Corporation in May this year, boAt maintains the top place with 25.6% share, growing by 102.4% YoY. Smartwatch category accounted for 28.3% of its overall shipment in 1Q23.
It also continues to lead the True Wireless Stereo (TWS) segment, with 30.6% share, growing by 81.9% YoY. It launched higher priced devices namely Lunar Series Smartwatches, Rockerz 551 over the ear headphones & Nirvana ION TWS.
(Edited by : Keshav Singh Chundawat)
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