The Introvert: How boAt’s low-profile CEO Sameer Mehta helped build a sound empire

HE PREFERS TO BE in the background, stays away from the limelight, and quietly does what he knows best — build cutting-edge audio devices and wearables for Indian consumers. Sameer Mehta, the introvert co-founder and CEO of boAt Lifestyle, says that his being lesser known compared to his gregarious co-founder and chief marketing officer Aman Gupta is by design. “I am not comfortable meeting people I don’t know. Therefore, I chose to lead operations, product development, and finance which require thorough processes. Aman is good at the front end, he knows how to build and nurture relationships, so he led sales and marketing. It is our contrasting personalities that have worked beautifully for the brand,” says Mehta.

In less than a decade, the duo has catapulted boAt to a leadership position in the market. The ₹3,121-crore audio and wearables brand competes with deep-pocketed ones such as JBL, Philips, Panasonic, Skullcandy, and OnePlus, in a cluttered market. boAt’s proposition is simple: build fashionable, durable devices especially suited for Indians. The devices are priced 20% cheaper than a JBL or Skullcandy, but boAt makes sure they don’t compete with cheap unbranded devices sourced from China. Mehta says boAt wouldn’t have survived had it played the mass game. “Back in the day, none of the brands were making devices for Indian consumers. They were designed for people in Japan, Europe, and Southeast Asia and then brought to India. We made sure we tailored everything to Indian audiences.”

Mehta has been obsessed with solving for Indian consumers. While Gupta has been the face of the brand, Mehta, a nuts-and-bolts person, made several trips to China meeting manufacturers and working with them for months so that they came out with a product that resonated with Indians. boAt’s first product, the BassHeads 225, came out of an insight that the bulk of Indians don’t bother to take care of their earphones. But they look for durability. “Most Indians stuff their earphones in their bags,” he explains adding that the first thing boAt did was to ensure that the wires don’t come off even if one tugged at them. “The second thing was that wires shouldn’t get tangled, so we made a flat tangle-free cable.” Priced at ₹499, the BassHeads 225 were a bestseller.

The coming together of Mehta and Gupta is serendipitous. They first met in 2013. Mehta was heading the stationery arm of Kores, his family business, and had also launched his startup in Mumbai, which made gaming gear. Gupta, after dabbling with a few startups that never took off, was director-sales at Harman (India). The introvert from Mumbai and the extrovert from Delhi had a common idea: to build an audio devices brand for India. “The incumbents were merely selling products manufactured in other countries. They were in boring shades of black and white and looked outdated,” remembers Mehta.

A smart way to enter uncharted territory is to distribute a global brand. And, both reached out to the then India head of House of Marley, Rahul Agarwal, in their individual capacities with a proposal to distribute the brand. Agarwal got the duo to meet on a monsoon afternoon in a suite on the topmost floor of Taj Lands End in Mumbai. “It was pouring cats and dogs, and I was wondering why I agreed to meet a person I didn’t know... Soon after the meeting, we found ourselves discussing working together and in less than three months Imagine Marketing (the parent entity of boAt) was born.” After distributing Marley for over a year, they were convinced there was space for a good mid-priced Indian brand. boAt was launched in 2016.

The road to making in India

Mehta is a padel enthusiast. Come weekends he is invariably at the Andheri Sports Complex in Mumbai, playing padel with friends and his boys. Interestingly, he partly owns the padel turf at the complex. Mehta believes that to promote the sport, having skin in the game is important. In business, having skin in the game for him meant to make the devices in India. Over 75% of his gadgets are manufactured in India today, but that was not an option in 2016. The next best thing was to source from China; Mehta was constantly involved in the innovation and production process so that quality wasn’t impacted.

Apart from ensuring that its devices were more durable than the competition, the founders realised that another innovation was crucial: significantly improving the quality of the microphone. “Most international brands don’t solve for noise reduction. In India, when you are walking around in an office environment, you need noise cancellation,” Mehta explains.

In the first couple of years, boAt manufactured barely 5,000 devices annually and large contract manufacturers refused to work with them. “In 2017-18, one of the largest contract manufacturers of audio devices, who I met at a Hong Kong fair, told us that they don’t entertain such small customers. Today, they are one of our biggest suppliers; we contribute 65% of their revenue.”

The company was profitable from day one — it’s mid-priced, high-quality, made-for-Indians positioning worked. The irony, however, was that despite touching ₹100 crore in revenue in the second year of operations, the founders found it difficult to raise capital. “The two of us had put in ₹30 lakh each at the start of the business and that was the only capital we had. Each time we had to place an order, we had to struggle to make sure we had money.” There was only one fund, Fireside Ventures, which was ready to believe in the boAt story and gave them their first cheque of ₹6 crore in 2018.

“We pitched to at least [a] 100 investors and nobody believed in the story… They wondered how we would scale up the business and reduce our dependency on China,” says Mehta. “They asked us what our moat was and the only moat we had was our revenue. At the backend we understood the product, but we didn’t understand manufacturing and design, we didn’t do too much marketing either.”

At that time, the concept of D2C (direct-to-consumer) was nascent and investing in a digital-first business and that too in a category like electronics was something that investors were uncomfortable with. “Kanwal (Kanwaljit Singh, founder & managing partner, Fireside Ventures) was the only one who believed in D2C. People used to ask us about our burn rate. We said we don’t have a burn rate; we have an earned rate, and we are comfortable. We knew we wouldn’t lose money because we were not changing consumer behaviour, neither were we creating a platform for people to come in. We were extremely efficient.” This narrative didn’t help much though.

The company’s revenue touched ₹300 crore in 2019 and by that time it was again running out of capital. The investor community still wasn’t willing to invest. Their question: How would you steer your ship, especially in a market flooded with deep-pocketed businesses? The duo didn’t have an answer. “We reached a point when between me and Aman, we would have signed ₹50-100 crore of personal guarantees with banks… No entrepreneur had ever signed personal guarantees, but we had the belief in ourselves.”

Why would investors not want to fund a ₹300-crore startup that was profitable? “One thing you have to understand about our industry is there are route kills… Our peers, the mobile phone brands, were No.1 in the market and then lost. When they tanked, nobody could believe China as an ecosystem could be defeated in electronics. That was the scare most investors had.”

Mehta and Gupta were able to raise Series-A funding of $100 million from Warburg Pincus only after boAt touched revenue of ₹800-900 crore in 2021. The following year, the company raised an additional $60 million from Warburg Pincus and Malabar Investments. When the funding doors finally opened, the audio devices brand, which had also diversified into wearables by then, decided to set up its R&D arm as well as move its manufacturing to India. It partnered with contract manufacturer Dixon Technologies to set up its facility in Noida, while its R&D facility came up in Bengaluru.

“Around 2020, we realised that we need to change the moat… It had to come from your own innovation and R&D. After two-and-half years, the first product to come out was Nirvana Ion. With this, we launched our premium portfolio, Nirvana. We decided to own our design. You can innovate with your own design, add software layers, and make it an altogether different product.” Around 21% of the company’s revenue now comes from its premium portfolio, which is also manufactured in India. “People are loving it and are willing to pay a premium… Our idea is to keep expanding on that.” With average prices of ₹2,500, the pricing of boAt’s Nirvana range is at par with the likes of JBL and OnePlus.

Mehta flaunts a Nirvana Crystl, a wireless audio device. “It’s got a 120-hour battery life, it has got the best sound quality and noise cancellation. It is priced at sub-₹3,000.” He is particularly excited about the launch of the next-generation smart ring. “I tested it for 10 days. I normally test every device that is coming out. I have sent it to the R&D centre to fix some issues I found in it.”

Building A Culture of Accountability and Delivery

The challenge most startups or any entrepreneur-run organisation faces is the founder’s/owner’s inability to let go. That not only leads to the organisation having a hierarchical structure of the boss knows it all, but also prevents innovation. The culture of employees thinking out-of-the-box is not there. Mehta believes in decentralisation. “We built a culture of accountability and delivery,” he says. “Everybody in the organisation is in charge of what they want to do. They, of course, have certain gatekeeping principles, but they are not micro-managed. People think of it as their own company, and they are able to innovate.”

Though both the founders are hands-on, they have always tried to hire people who would help them take the business to the next level. In 2021, when the business had reached a considerable scale, they brought in Vivek Gambhir, a McKinsey and Godrej Consumer Products veteran, as the CEO (he is chairperson now). To begin with, the duo started to report to Gambhir. That was the biggest indication of the founders’ intent of willing to let go and to build a professionally run organisation. “Vivek taught us to think big and think strategically. He ensured we got the right set of people, taught us how to build an organisation, how to build a culture, how to foster innovation and how to think about innovation continuously.”

Innovation and long-term thinking are buzzwords in the organisation, claims Mehta. “It is not just product innovation, we also talk about how to innovate in finance, customer service, and other verticals.” He says that the organisation is already focussing on building its next line of leadership. “My vision for this company is to make it into a legacy. It has to last beyond me and Aman.”

Being IPO bound

boAt is currently getting ready to get listed by the end of 2025. It will be the first audio devices and wearables company to hit the capital market. However, for the current breed of startups that have been listed, it hasn’t been a particularly smooth ride. “When you start building a team, you bring in investors; it’s your duty to give them an exit. You have to create value for everyone. If your guidance is in line with what your actual long-term strategy is, I think there is nothing to worry.”

Mehta says that sometimes one needs to make tactical decisions to make sure the quarter plays out well, but in the end, it’s all about thinking long-term. “Even if you have to compromise your short-term for your long-term, we will do that. In this day and age where technology is changing like crazy, you need to make sure you are investing for the future,” he says.

boAt’s revenue dipped 7% in FY24, but it managed to narrow its losses. The company incurred losses for the first time in its history in FY23 and FY24 due to its investment in manufacturing and smartwatches, but the founders are confident that it will swing to profitability in FY25. Mehta believes that quarter-on-quarter ups and downs in revenue and profitability are a way of life. The real game lies in building a multi-tenure business and boAt, he claims, is already on that path.