 "Audio brand boAt scales up to Rs 4,0000 crore in net sales for FY 2022-23")
boAt, an Indian audio and wearables brand, said it has now scaled up to approximately Rs 4,000 crore($ 500 million) in net sales for FY2022-23. This milestone has been achieved on the back of its leading presence in India’s booming audio category. The firm said it has now established a leadership position in the hyper-growth wearables category. This is powered by a distinctive and unique strategy to pursue a software play through its recently acquired KaHa platform. It is also creating a one-of-its-kind health and wellness wearables ecosystem within its product portfolio.
“Our commitment to ‘Make in India’ remains strong and the rapid pace of our transition to Indian manufacturing and our JV with Dixon Technologies is evidence of that,” said Sameer Mehta, co-founder and CEO, boAt. “Having raised private equity capital over multiple rounds including from Warburg Pincus, we believe boAt is well positioned and capitalized to continue to make aggressive investments in establishing ourselves as a leading wearables brand in the country, similar to our achievements in the audio category.”
The company registered over 2X growth in its scale for two consecutive fiscal years: FY21 and FY22. But the firm’s profit dipped 20 per cent in FY22 as cost of procurement outpaced its revenue growth, according to media platform Entrackr. It said that boAt’s revenue from operations shot up 2.2X to Rs 2,873 crore during the fiscal year ending March 2022 as opposed to Rs 1,314 crore in FY21, according to its consolidated annual financial statements with the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
boAt drives most of its revenue from the sale of audio devices such as wired earphones, wireless earphones, headphones, speakers, wired headphones, and soundbars.
On the audio side, partnerships with leading global companies (e.g., Qualcomm – who is also an investor in the company, Dolby, and Dirac) have helped boAt to bring leading global technology to consumers. This, coupled with its in-house R&D facility, boAt Labs, which has co-engineered next-generation ‘hearables’ products with global tech companies.
In the wearables category, boAt is pursuing a distinctive strategy of investing significantly in its software and home-grown app. Its acquisition of KaHa last year (a wearables technology platform) has enabled it to create a home-grown consumer app and features specifically tailored for Indian consumers and use-cases. Through this strategy, boAt expects to be the only Indian player that will have an integrated end-to-end stack of hardware and software and a home-grown consumer app.
Over the past few years, boAt has made significant investments in the local Indian manufacturing ecosystem. Most of its audio and wearables products are being manufactured in India via several EMS (electronics manufacturing services). This includes Dixon, with whom boAt has also created a manufacturing JV. In FY2023 alone, around 15 million products were made in India by boAt.