Boat Success Story is one of the most inspiring stories among the youths.
Boat is a big name nowadays in the electronic category of TWS and other audio products. Its parent company is Imagine Marketing Pvt Ltd.
Let’s see the Boat Success Story from the very start and learn the strategies that made them King in the Indian Market.
Started by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta’s savings-investment of 15-15 lakh rupees with a total capital of 30 lakhs Rupees only.
The idea of the company was right in 2014 but was officially launched in 2016.
The company was a pure bootstrap startup.
No funding was available for them even though the banks were demanding collateral but they didn’t have enough assets.
So what just happened is that they became the market leader in the next five years and became one of the best brands in the country.
The Boat Success Story : How It Started
The boat started the business by selling Apple charging cables as a single product.
Founder Sameer Mehta says he has seen many I IPhone users using the charging cable with taping from ends.
Therefore they just build the cable that can last up to 10,000 bends. The company outsourced the manufacturing from China.
The products were made in China; they were imported to India, and then the labeling, branding, and packaging work was done here in the company itself.
Here also they gotta face the challenge about to convince and dealing with the traders.
The suppliers had a threshold minimum limit that was to be maintained while making orders.
But due to the lack of funds they had to manage it and anyhow convinced the Chinese trader to work with them on a small scale now on a promise that they’ll increase the business further.
Till 2016 from 2014 when Boat didn’t deal in audio devices, they just worked as a distributor worldwide as the products were onto Amazon right after getting imported from China.
The total sales of the boat at the time were from Amazon and online mediums only.
Though the company had a long vision they’ve just raised this small setup to generate some cash and actual liquid funds.
Hence the ultimate goal was to introduce a fashionable electronic brand in India.
The First-Ever Marketing in Boat Success Story
The product was ready and decided now it was about the marketing. Marketing is one of the major factors that caused the Boat Success Story to become a reality.
But unfortunately, they didn’t have enough funds.
So they decided to use Facebook ads so they can connect to the audience directly and can collaborate with their customers only.
The first ever ad of the boat was of an Apple phone charging cable where a broken cable was shown and the tagline was mentioned; tired of buying Apple charging cables switch to boat
To make it more appealing they also mentioned certified by Apple badging and has 2 years of warranty.
Founder Aman Gupta said, “In such kind of marketing it a benefit that you are directly connected to your consumer but also there is a disadvantage that the millennials allow you to present as a brand but if you are unable to fulfill your promises your brand image crashes very fast.”
Hence the founder took this strategy positively and the reviews they got there were stored as data for market research and analysis.
In starting this was decided that the brand would sell the product on Amazon and other online-based platforms only via E-Commerce.
This was even successful as no one was offering such great quality products at such an affordable price.
Which made them place well in the online market.
This all resulted in the boat charging cable becoming bestsellers on Amazon because they were much lower priced as compared to Apple cables and the quality was high.
Audio Arrival in Boat’s Story
Now this was the time to enter into the audio range market which meant the actual business model was to be started now
Aman Gupta says I spend a lot of time in China sitting in the factories to get the right product.
Aman Gupta perquisitly holds experience of 3 years in the electronics business. From 2007- 2010 they had their own family business.
Additionally, he had 6 months of work experience in JBL where he was affected by the music industry and learned a lot.
And the learnings are implemented in BOAT.
Both the founders Sameer Mehta and AMAN GUPTA wanted a brand that deals in fashionable audio-concentrated electronics.
For sure Boat started it with cables but with good research and actual work, they finally introduced a new product in their product line which was earphones.
Unfortunately, the market was in perfect competition at the time because, by the time they were just entering the market, 200+ brands were already in India and were playing at various price levels in the earphone market.
Jio was a new boom at the time so the content creation and consumption both were at the hike.
This made it clear that the demand is high but also the competition.
The company decided not to play the price war game that was made using their market research and identifying a big gap in the market.
Therefore the segment they were going to work on was neither expensive that it becomes affordable as well the quality was going to be far better than the Chinese products
The First Earphones Lead to Boat Success
In starting they introduced earphones ranging between Rs 350 – Rs 550 that were not being provided by anyone at that time note that the audio quality was far high and the price was low.
The boat kept its emphasis on the customers and stayed connected to the reviews of them
Some of the insights they got were:
- Consumers wanted fall-proof headphones
- The color variation was limited
- Tangle-free earphones with longer cable at a reasonable point
The company worked on both points and even used metals instead of earlier boring plastic material which made the product even more interesting.
Bass is Fun Lead to Boat Success
The country where the culture itself holds instruments like Tabla and the people are mad for high bass.
Keeping this in mind Boat added more of the base in their products which made the public love Boat products
The first Earphone by boat was a Basehead
Expansion in the Brand Name of Boat
The market was consistently growing fast by 20-20% annually.
In 2018 Boat launched their speakers and in 2019 the Soundbars and home audio systems.
The price for soundbars was fixed to Rs 9000 and 30 -40 units were sold per day.
The boat also introduced sweatproof and waterproof audio-hearable products
Right from the very start Boat made its products on a demand-pull basis. That means first they made a product that was in high demand and secondly made it so well that it became famous due to its quality.
Even the Apple charging cable was made as per the urgency needed by the founders
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Strategies and Accomplishments by Boat Success Story
Boat made 110 million and 270 million in the first and second years of the business respectively.
Here all of the earnings were put back into the business again.
Today Boat sells nearly 6000-8000 products in a day out of which 90% are audio products and 10% are chargers and cables.
BoatHeads
Another strategy by Boat was to call their common users and brand ambassadors as Boat head.
Being a Boat head feels just like being part of a clan that gives a feeling of belongingness and community to the consumers
Focusing Millennials
Boat focused on their target customers too much and started communicating in their language.
They treated them just like a family.
You may also know very well that in the last 3 years word of mouth spread just like wildfire.
The sole aim of the company was to provide affordable durable and fashionable products to the millennials.
So far the company has been only online-centric but now they are going towards offline mode also.
Currently, only 15 percent of the boat deals in offline mode, and it can be 25%
Funding and investment
In the first two years, the company has struggled a lot. In 2018 Kanwaljit Singh from Fireside Venture invested 60 million in the company. Singh was too much impressed by the founder’s ability to explode in the market.
Currently, Boat earns nearly 100 crores within the Domestic market itself.
More than 3X of growth
In starting the company had a lack of funds to do marketing but now they just started to work on marketing aggressively.
Marketing and Endorsement by Boat
What is the love of people in India? Bollywood, Cricket and Music.
Boat leveraged all of the three in their advertisement to win over the audience.
Bollywood actors like Kartik Aryan, Kiara Advani and cricketers like Hardik Pandya and Shikhar Dhawan, and the singers like Guru Randhawa, Diljit & Neha Kakar.
Not one or two but many endorsements are made by boat with the collaboration of such celebrities.
Aman Gupta mentioned that he doesn’t want to spend even a penny on conventional ads.
Boat Audio was declared as the leading brand in earwear catAcusition7.3% of the market share. The business has been profitable for 5+ years straight
Learnings From Boat Success story
Let’s know the learnings in 4 key points:
1. Market Research
The boat worked on Market research on a timely basis.
Good marketing research helps in understanding the customer better way, which made Boat make for right decisions, and work in the conversion of technologies.
Which gave the Ultimate results.
2. Customer-Centric Approach
The Brand has been customer-centric from the very start and didn’t work on customer satisfaction only but on delighting.
They prioritized the customer demand, understood their requirement fulfilled it as a product maker, and took decisions accordingly.
3. Aggressive Marketing
The high influence on the public with the three major loves of the country boat won the game.
Especially in beating the competition.
Knowing the psychology even if the same segment of product offers similar quality people prefer the product that is being endorsed by a famous personality.
It boosted the trust factor involved and the class attached to the product.
4. Proactive and Dynamic Approach to Business.
The Boat remains very dynamic and proactive to the market change and the environment. The execution process was very fast and fluent.
Many changes are made in the business.
The changes are made according to market forces and demand to stay in.
This is a very important factor for any business to be a player in the long run for any business that boat reflected very well.
This was all for the Boat Success story here in this blog you can visit our website Being Diplomatic to read more on such case studies and other relevant topics of the business world.
Well informative case study ☺️.