The Sucess Story of Boat

Listening to good music is the best way to treat yourself and on top of that if you’re an audiophile you will definitely have a ball of a time. Headsets plugged in, volume raised and you are just ignoring all the buzz around you…Sounds fascinating, isn’t it? If this sounds good then it feels the best when you are actually in that groove and if the electronics are from BOAT, job done mate, sorted. This is what it is, the so-called brand value. If you aspire for high quality sound, deep bass that goes hand in hand with affordable prices then Boat is all you are asking for, cost-effective; easy on the pockets; a broad catalogue to choose from…All under one roof.

In India if you capture the market, you have already started writing your success story, the obvious reason behind it the massive Indian population. As they say “Winners don’t do different things, they do things differently”, “It’s not the customer’s job to know what they want” and this very quote somewhere rubs on over a brand like Boat and with that strategy Boat chipped in into the market. Coming onto the business model from Boat, Mivi, one of Boat’s competitor roped in social media influencers and YouTubers for their endorsements.

Whereas on the other hand Boat made a chop and change in their strategy, they signed cricketers and bollywood stars, the picture is as clear as a crystal, where YouTubers (Mivi ambassadors) are known relatively to more of younger audience and on the other way around cricketers, bollywood dignitaries (Boat ambassadors) are well known to all the age brackets in India regardless of being young or old, Boat played a good move here and as a result they culminate a huge market share amongst its peers.

As you can clearly spot a major difference between Boat and its counterparts…If compared it’s almost chalk and cheese. The market share of the counterparts are as follows: Boult – 5.3%, Noise – 7.7%, Realme – 8.1% and then Boat with a mammoth market share of 35.8%

One question that arises about a particular product, Is that, is the product manufactured in India? So in the case of Boat the answer is unfortunately no, almost all the products of Boat are manufactured in China. The company Boat or the brand is Indian but this apparently seems to be some re-branding and re-packaging thing and the reason being it’s cheaper to manufacture in China than making goods in many other countries. Lower Chinese manufacturing costs translate into better margins and lower prices for the end user, your brand’s gross profit can increase with the lower cost of production. I’m not at all against the quality of the brand’s products, I can assure you…Boat perfectly maintains the standards and benchmarks they’ve set for their devices.

What was the idea behind Boat?

Boat doesn’t boast of a very prevalent history. It is a Delhi based startup that was started in 2016 by one of the popularly known Shark from Shark Tank India, Aman Gupta and co-founder Sameer Mehta. The company term itself as a lifestyle brand that deals in fashionable consumer electronics. Boat lifestyle was started with the sole aim of bringing affordable, durable and more importantly, modish audio products and accessories to Millennials and Gen ZEEs

Having started as a cable manufacturer and seller company, today, it has expanded its catalogue. Now it sells a wide variety of fashionable electronic goods ranging from travel chargers and premium cables to headphones, earphones, speakers. The company is steadily growing and extending its services to millions of ‘Boatheads’ (A term the company uses for all its consumers and brand ambassadors).

Reasons behind success

1. Consumer first approach and improvisations

2. Continuously expanding catalogue

3. Portrayal as lifestyle brand

4. Online marketing

5. Spot on targeting

Conclusion

We have almost covered the journey of this lifestyle brand. They have just entered the market but have already acquired a big percentage of it. Boat lifestyle offers stylish as well as durable products which has been the highlight. Their effect on the market has been so much that the popularity of products of Boat has forced big giants like JBL to lower down the prices of their products to compete in the affordable audio segment and also a good to know fact, Aman Gupta, the founder of Boat lifestyle was an employee at JBL.

Technology has made our lives better and it is one of the biggest assistant in the world we have right now. Boat lifestyle wants to be at the forefront of the changes in the audio market. The brand doesn’t seem to stop but rather embark on a great journey ahead.