How BoAt became an overnight success?
In 6 years, it's one of India's biggest D2C brands.
Welcome to the 42nd edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
The year is 2000
You’re school
You want to buy a Sony walkman
But your friend suggests a cheap Chinese alternative 🤯
Early 2000 = Electronic revolution in India Ft. China
What did these products offer that Indian brands did not?
Affordability: 1/3rd the price of homegrown brands
Fast moving electronics: a phenomenon rare to Indians
Variety: users were spoilt for choices available in the market
Fast adaption: see it on TV, & next day it’s in the market
‘Indian’ization: Chinese products that sang Indian songs
Now the Indian market had 2 kinds of products 👀
Expensive premium products - lacking style 💎
Stylish Chinese products - lacking durability 🇨🇳
Enters BoAt : Year 2016 🎵
Aman Gupta & Sameer Mehta launch BoAt - a fashionable consumer electronics. This is India’s very own good quality consumer electronics. Headphones, earphones, speakers, chargers, digital watches & premium cables.
What BoAt solved for? 🎯
Trendy, fashionable, durable, and affordable electronics - bridging the gap in India’s consumer electronics segment.
How it became an overnight success? ⚡
Three things that really hit it off for BoAt were its pricing, positing, & creating the aspirational value.
Pricing 💰
BoAt’s pricing targeted the pocket friendly millennials. Starting its range of products from 1999, BoAt offered two things that the young Indian audience craved for: easy on the wallet & fashionable. BoAt created for the segment that lied between premium and affordable.
Collaboration 🤝
BoAt did influencer marketing right. By bringing in the two things that work like crazy in India, Bollywood & cricket, BoAt captured the top of its TG’s mindshare.
Cricketers endorsement: Hardik Pandya, Rishabh Pant, Shikhar Dhawan
Bollywood endorsement: Guru Randhawa, Neha Kakkar, Kiara Advani, Kartik Aaryan, Diljit Dosanjh
Collaborations: BoAt X Masaba Gupta exclusive collection at Lakme Fashion week, BoAt X IPL, & BoAt X Bira
💡 DidYouNotice?
All BoAt ads, visual or static, portray BoAt as a lifestyle brand.
Ever expanding catalogue ♥️
Knowing its TG - the young millennials, BoAt catered to their notorious needs from day 1. Staring small from travel chargers/ portable charges, slowly BoAt ventured into other verticals - earphones, headphones, cables, speakers, and now watches.
They even explored a higher price range, which was received very well.
In FY21, BoAt reported 1,511.7 crore as their operating revenue. A steep jump of 2.2X from FY20.
Food for thought 🔥
Words like branding, positing, & placement seem like jargons to young D2C brands, but BoAt here is a testament to knowing your audience & creating branding opportunities where they are hanging out. It positioned itself as a lifestyle brand, which means, creating a use case, a need, a must have.
That’s all for now.
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