The Bro Code - Meet Sound Industry's New Disruptors

Think of music and millennials, and what’s affordable that suits their budget. boAt, operating out of the posh Hauz Khas colony in Delhi, neatly fits the bill. But wait, why boAt and what does it mean to the nextgen? “When you go on a boat you leave land and worries behind, you go into your own zone, same way if you wear our products you plug into nirvana, your own zone,” says Co-founder Aman Gupta.

- Punita Sabharwal

Those products are mainly headphones, a lifestyle statement for every youngster. There lies the moolah – the company clocked more than Rs 100 crore revenues - for the brand last year.

Aman, a Bollywood buff, knows the big picture and regales me with Salman Khan, Amitabh Bachchan analogies. The story of boAt surely sounds like one, a box-office hit in the making.

boAt doesn’t operate like one of the fancy startups I get to meet often. Aman tells me that boAt was operating out of Social, a café doubling up as an office space, and also found some of his employees there. In January the company shifted to Lets Cowork.

The company has 15 brand ambassadors on board. It is an impressive line up – Kartik Aaryan, Hardik Pandya, Jacqueline Fernandez, Shikhar Dhawan and more. They all hardsell the brand on their social media handles.

boAt has two Co-founders, twin head offices, one in Delhi for sales and marketing spearheaded by Aman and the other in Mumbai headed by Sameer Mehta catering to product, logistics, and the operations side of the business.

The founders meet in Delhi, Mumbai or Bangalore where their investor Fireside Ventures has its office. Else they visit China once in two months where the contract manufacturing is happening for all boAt products. “I go more hotel nights with Sameer than with my wife. I call it an arranged marriage between Sameer and me,” laughs Aman.

THE BROTHERS OF MUSIC

The founders come from different backgrounds, never interacted prior to setting up boAt and have been sailing in this startup journey together for the past five years.