How boAt started

boAt was founded in 2016 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, at a time when the Indian accessories market was flooded with cheap, unreliable products and dominated on the premium end by expensive international brands with little local presence.

The problem they saw

Anyone who has owned a pair of earphones in India knows the frustration of a cable fraying within weeks. Gupta and Mehta had both worked in and around the electronics and import business before starting boAt, and they saw a gap between the throwaway accessories sold cheaply and the premium foreign brands priced well beyond what most buyers were willing to spend. There was room for something durable, reasonably priced, and designed with an understanding of how Indian consumers actually used their devices.

What they sold first

The company's earliest products were charging cables and audio accessories, built to survive rougher daily use than typical budget cables. This was a deliberate starting point — cables are a low-cost, high-frequency purchase, which made them an easy way to get the boAt name into people's hands and build repeat trust before asking customers to spend more on headphones or speakers.

From there, the catalogue expanded into wired and wireless earphones, headphones, and speakers, aimed squarely at young, price-conscious buyers who wanted style and reasonable sound quality without paying international prices.

The decisions that mattered

boAt leaned heavily into online marketplaces in its early years, which let it reach customers across the country without the cost of setting up physical retail from day one. E-commerce also gave the brand fast feedback — reviews, ratings, and return patterns — that a young company could use to adjust products quickly.

The brand invested early in how it presented itself, choosing bold colours, youthful branding, and marketing built around music and lifestyle rather than technical specifications alone. This helped boAt stand apart in a category where most competitors talked only about battery life and driver size.

Association with music culture, including collaborations and creator partnerships, became a recurring theme in how the brand built recognition. It positioned boAt not just as an electronics company but as something closer to a lifestyle brand that happened to sell audio gear.

What a small brand can take from this

Start with something small, frequently bought, and easy to get right. Cables were never going to be exciting, but they let boAt earn trust cheaply before customers were asked to commit to bigger purchases.

Know exactly who you are selling to. boAt's tone, colours, and marketing spoke directly to a younger audience that felt overlooked by older, more clinical electronics brands, and that clarity of identity carried through every product launch.

Durability and price are not opposites if you design for it from the start. A product built to survive daily wear, sold at a fair price, earns word of mouth that advertising cannot buy.

If you are building a brand with its own clear identity and want a store that reflects it instead of blending into a marketplace page, you can start with early access.

Varchas Stores is not affiliated with boAt. This is an editorial story based on public reporting, written for founders who are starting out.