As homegrown consumer electronics brands break new barriers, Boult Audio Co-Founder and CEO, Varun Gupta, said on Saturday that they have changed the perception of domestic consumers by providing premium quality at a reasonable price and are localising raw material very fast. In 2022, Boult Audio not only became India's second-largest audio brand by selling a TWS every 7 seconds across major marketplaces, but also dominated the smartwatch market by being the fastest-selling and highest-rated smartwatch brand on a leading e-commerce platform (Flipkart).
"As Chinese companies have always experimented with lower prices, consumers are inclined towards purchase their products. Our prices have represented an exceptional value proposition," Gupta told IANS. "Most importantly, we have succeeded in preventing consumers from undermining domestically produced goods. Consumers previously believed that Indian products lacked sufficient quality, however, Boult Audio has changed this perception by providing premium quality at a reasonable price," he emphasised.
With roughly 2 million verified customer evaluations across Amazon and Flipkart, Boult Audio has paved the way to become a trusted brand among Indian consumers. "We intend to localise 70 per cent of raw materials by the end of this year and 80 per cent by the end of 2024 as part of our Make in India' campaign," Gupta told IANS.
The company has produced approximately 2 million units across the country, and more than 90 per cent of our products are exclusively manufactured in the country. Gupta said that currently, they are focused on expanding existing consumer electronics categories, that is audio and smartwatches.
"Our efforts will be focused on expanding the smartwatch category, which is growing at a rapid pace. We hope to capitalise on this market expansion and establish the company as a leader in the wearable market," he elaborated. The current revenue split between the audio and smartwatch categories is 80:20, indicating that 80 per cent of revenue has come from the audio category, including TWS, neckbands, etc., while the remaining 20 per cent comes from smartwatches.
"We intend to penetrate deeper in online marketplaces. To contribute to this, we are scaling up our D2C platform," Gupta informed, adding that they rely on government initiatives such as presumptive taxation, production-linked incentives (PLI) to direct business operations.
"Moving forward, we hope to receive increased government support," he added.