#7 How Aman Gupta sailed his boAt

Start-ups, raising funds, Venture Capitalists (VCs), Private Equity (PE), we all have been reading these headlines in the newspaper for a while now.

The start-up business is not for the easy - hearted, and is definitely not a get-quick-rich scheme, as people like to think so. It takes a lot of grit and determination to scale a start-up. And most importantly, the resilience to deal with repeated failure. In fact, 90% of all start-ups fail.

Firstly, let’s start with what a start-up is. Mostly young and new, a start-up will try to offer a unique product or service, and try to do something that hasn’t been done before. Something that is disruptive.

Think of your start - up as a baby, from the ideation to helping it develop into a mature adult.

Let us examine this using a very common startup known to you: BoAt.

1.  The baby (Pre - Seed Stage): This is when your baby is born. The first seed that sparks the idea that is your startup, and you start to assemble a core team (of two).

Aman Gupta got the idea of boAt in 2014, and finally launched it in 2016 with Sameer Mehta. At its baby stage, the whole idea was to focus on two key points - affordable and stylish products for the Indian consumer.

2.  Toddler (Seed): The company at this stage has around 2-10 employees and is bootstrapped (entirely funded by the founders). You and your employees will need to be the engineers, product managers, marketers, accountants, everything all at once.

Aman and Sameer invested approximately 30 lakhs INR in the company, which was entirely their own. They oversaw everything, from the manufacturing process in China, and to the marketing in India and multiple sales channels.

3. Early Childhood (Early): Now, your baby is learning to walk. At this stage, the start-up needs to have a Minimum Viable Product (MVP, fully viable and functional), and is tested out in the market. When the start-up seeks funding at this stage, it is termed as series A.

BoAt raised its first funding round in 2018, two years after its conception, from Fireside Ventures. The first product included a charging cable for the iPhone as well, which was to be sturdier than the Apple charging wire.

4.  Adolescence (Growth): This is when you start to see the money. Funds raised in this stage are term as series B/C funding. This is also the most critical stage, for it has the highest failure rate and can potentially serve as the making or breaking point for you.

Boat did excellently in sales pretty early on, and later on expanded to Bluetooth earphones, headphones, speakers, premium cables etc.  

5. Adulthood (Expansion/maturity): Congrats, now your start - up is definitely doing well. You should now have a team of 10 to 100 employees.

For expansion, boAt now aims to expand across geographies, as well as focus even more on product Research and Development (R&D).

6. Old age (Exit): This is termed as the last stage. Now, as the founder, you can either go for an IPO to raise more funds, or sell it and move on to another venture.

Boat currently has about 180 employees, and is headed for an IPO, of which more details are expected soon, as the company is currently well capitalized.  

The focal point here is that this is not Gupta’s first venture. In various interviews, he has mentioned that this is not his first venture, but rather his sixth, the previous five having been failed. “You only need one success,” he has said.

Will you invest in BoAt’s IPO? Which start-up would you want me to cover next?

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