WEARING INDIA ON THEIR SLEEVES

WHILE THE INDIAN SMARTPHONE INDUSTRY IS DOMINATED BY CHINESE COMPANIES WITH NO INDIAN BRAND IN THE TOP 5, INDIAN START-UPS IN THE WEARABLES SPACE HAVE TURNED THE TABLES, ACQUIRING A COMBINED MARKET SHARE OF MORE THAN 70 PER CENT 

- NIDHI SINGAL

REMEMBER THE TIME,  more than a decade ago, when smartphones started entering the mass market in India? Around the same time, another category of devices had started gaining traction—the humble earphones. Riding on the easy accessibility to multimedia content through smartphones, most new smartphone owners used to be on the hunt for a trusty pair of earphones or headphones. But all they used to get were either expensive products from companies like Sony, Philips, Bose, etc., or cheap Chinese knock-offs.

Despite that, there was a boom in the personal audio device market in India. But back then, these products were not designed for millennial or GenZ customers. To compound matters, most of them were expensive, while the Chinese products were usually of poor quality, lacked a comprehensive warranty, or didn’t provide reliable after-sales service. That meant, if a customer accidentally damaged his or her device, they had to buy a new one.

Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta were some of the first few people who recognised this gap. The duo started a distribution company called Imagine Marketing in 2014 that secured the exclusive distribution rights for House of Marley headphones, earphones, earbuds, and audio systems in India. Building upon the insights gleaned from this endeavour, they took the leap to launch their own brand, ‘boAt’, in 2016.