Thread by @Finology_Quest

How BoAt became Market leader?

- A thread 🧵 (1/15)

#Investing #sharemarket #finance

Unless you live under a rock, you don’t need an intro or research report to tell u that Boat has tkn d audio wearables market by storm. Till 2016, No one really would have thought that an Indian brand would rule this industry, as the a market was flooded with Chinese players. (2)

Aman Gupta & Sameer Gupta, founders of the company said back in 2016 no one believed an Indian company can take over the Chinese. Banks didn’t believe in them & declined to lend; investors shied away from putting money in an Indian hardware venture. (3)

Due to that, the founders had to pump in their own money and in just a year, the bootstrapped company made 31 crore in revenue. Fast forward to 2020, it has overtaken Apple, Samsung, and Xiaomi to become the biggest player in the industry in India. (4)

In 2020, its revenue stood at ₹701 crores, and profits at ₹49 crores, the brand sold 15,000 units every day within a three million-plus online user community in the wearables market in India and had more than 30% market share. (5)

Source: CANALYS estimates, May 2020. (6)

But, How did boAt sail to this level of success and
Will Boat be a hit or a flop just like Micromax, another hardware start-up in India? (7)

Before Boat, customers had 2 segments to choose from, 1 with inrtnl brands tht provided high-quality accessories at premium prices, & 2 segment tht provided low quality, cheap products. (8)

BoAt bridged the gap between them as it kept its pricing below the premium brands while offering moderate quality products. (9)

Another strategy tht has made boat market leader is identifying the trends, It realized wireless audio would be the next big thing in the mkt & was quick to roll out its true wireless stereo (earbuds) long before most other brands in the segment. (10)

boAt entered d industry at the right time. Smartphone penetration in India was increasing & most smartphone brands stopped bundling earphones in the box. Amazon & Flipkart were relentlessly competing against each other with aggressive promotions, & boAt capitalized on that. (11)

Work from home and online learning during the pandemic led to increase in sales of headphones, which also attributed to the growth of Boat. (12)

Another major driver of Boat’s success is its Mgmt, Aman Gupta, co-founder, knows the Indian audio market well. Before founding the boAt, he was the sales head at Harman Intrntnl & was responsible for managing sales & operations of brands like JBL, Harman for Indian mrkt. (13)

Also, boAt is not looking to grab market share by undercutting the competition on pricing. Often, boAt is not the cheapest product on the table in any category. The company wants to offer superior and affordable products to millennials. (14)

But Chinese players pushing out Indian players in this industry is quite common, it has happened before, it can happen again. (15)

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