Indian brand boAt popular for its personal audio products today announced that it has raised Rs. 500 crore from an affiliate of Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity fund focused on growth investing and new investor Malabar Investments.
This comes after it raised $100 million (Rs. 731 crore) funding from Warburg Pincus back in January 2021.
The company said that the new investment will enable it to accelerate its plans to attain leadership in the smartwatches category, scale up its business across channels and geographies (both within and outside India).
It will further strengthen its category leadership within audio, enhance its R&D and design capabilities, and support building a local manufacturing ecosystem under the Make-in-India initiative, added the company.
Through boAt labs, its 120-person in-house R&D team and the latest acquisition of KaHa Technologies, wearables technology and IoT platform, with 64 patents and patent applications, it is developing the next generation of products.
The company is also making significant progress in diversifying its manufacturing footprint via partnerships with various leading EMS players in India, including Dixon, with whom it has also created a manufacturing JV.
A significant proportion of boAt’s products are now being produced in India (~1 million units every month currently). The company is also putting plans in place to take the boAt brand overseas.
Aman Gupta, Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer, of boAt, said:
We have established clear leadership in our core personal audio category and are the number two player globally in earwear. It is a matter of great pride that a brand that was born in India is now ranked amongst the top brands in the world. We now want to make smartwatches our second core and will replicate the boAt digital playbook to become global leaders in this category as well. The new funding will allow us to invest significantly to disrupt the smartwatches spaces with more innovative products. And we are thrilled that investors continue to have strong conviction and confidence in the boAt story.