Boult Audio founder and chief executive Varun Gupta told PTI that its overall audio category business grew by over 30% but the smartwatch category is growing in triple digits.
“We are expecting 100% growth. We are planning to get offline and go further, deeper into online marketplaces. We are scaling up our D2C platform which means retailing on our own website. Smartwatch is a category which is exploding and growing at a triple-digit number. That gives us an impetus and push to launch our brands in this category,” Gupta said.
The company’s business grew about 66% in 2022-23 to around Rs 500 crore and it expects revenue to grow to Rs 1,000 crore with a four-fold jump in sales of smartwatches.
Gupta said that in 2021-22, its entire revenue came from audio devices.
The company forayed into the smartwatch business in the second half of 2022-23 which contributed around 20% to the overall business worth Rs 500 crore.
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“In terms of the split this year, 60% should be coming from audio because that’s a category where we have been very strong and smartwatches will be 40%. If you take up the Rs 1,000 crore number, Rs 600 crore should be coming from audio and about Rs 400 crore should be coming from smartwatches,” Gupta said. According to market research and analysis firm IDC, Boult Audio recorded 366.5% YoY growth and 9.3% market share in the wearables segment in the March 2023 quarter.
It retained second place in the true wireless earbuds category with a 15.5% share and 341.2% YoY growth. Despite being a new entrant in the smartwatch category, it stood fifth with 3.2% share, IDC said.
Gupta said that the company is ploughing back revenue into the quality of products, research and development, enhancing customer experience etc which helps in maintaining over 4-star ratings on products from users.
“The highest specifications smartwatch sold by one of the biggest smartwatch players in the world, maybe comes at about $1,000. Our average highest tech smartwatch would be at about let’s say $50. That’s how far apart we are with the price point. In spite of this, we are able to bring in 4-5 star rated products with amazing design and technology to our consumers,” Gupta said.
He said that the company has onboarded brand ambassadors such as A-rated Indian cricketers like Surya Kumar Yadav, Bollywood actor Saif Ali Khan and collaborating with the best of the influencers, and content creators to be more relatable to Indian consumers across different languages from different parts of the country.
“We try to do everything under the sun to make sure that we build a great product and thereby be able to reach all our potential consumers,” Gupta said.
He said that the company is gradually doubling production capacity in India to 10 lakh units from 5 lakh units at present in the same ratio as sales.
Gupta said that the government schemes like production-linked incentives and the Import of goods at concessional rates (IGCR) have made local production very competitive compared to import.
Under IGCR, the government exempts imports of raw materials for local manufacturing.
“We made a lot of inroads and development in the “Make in India” project. In 2021, we were hardly manufacturing in India. In the year 2022, we started setting up the foundation for “Make in India” and 2023 is the year for us to scale up the manufacturing in India. We manufactured about 2 million units across the country under the “Make in India” scheme,” Gupta said.
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