Inspiring Biography of Aman Gupta

Aman Gupta is a co-founder and chief marketing officer (CMO) of boAt.

boAt is a popular Indian audio products brand.

Introduction-

Aman Gupta hails from a Baniya family in Delhi, India.

His father, Neeraj Gupta works as a Director at Advanced Telemedia Pvt. Ltd.

His mother is Jyoti Kochar Gupta.

Aman has a brother, Anmol Gupta.

Education-

Aman did his schooling from Delhi Public School R.K.Puram, New Delhi.

After finishing his schooling in 1998, he joined Shaheed Bhagat Singh College, University of Delhi to study for a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours).

Aman graduated in 2001.

As he hailed from a family of Chartered Accountants, his father forced him to study Chartered Accountancy.

From 1999 to 2002, Aman studied Chartered Accountancy in Accounting and Finance from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

Even though he didn’t like finance, he finished CA course at a young age of 21.

At that time, Aman was one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in India.

He tried for a job at a few companies but got rejected.

Job & business-

Finally, Aman got selected into Citi.

In March 2003, he joined Citi in New Delhi and worked here as an Assistant Manager until August 2005.

Aman quit the job because it didn’t excite him.

After quitting his job, he along with his father started Advanced Telemedia Pvt Ltd. in September 2005.

This company used to import gadgets from foreign brands and sell them in India.

Aman worked with many brands like Beats Audio, Sennheiser, Telex, etc.

He was into sales and marketing and sold many gadgets for around four years until those brands decided to directly sell in India.

In March 2010, Aman quit working for Advanced Telemedia Pvt Ltd.

Getting married & pursuing MBA-

On 7 April 2008, Aman got married to Priya Dagar.

Around 2010, his wife suggested he do a Master of Business Administration (MBA).

So, in 2010, Aman joined Indian School of Business to study MBA in Finance and Strategy.

In 2011, he studied MBA as an exchange student at Kellogg School of Management, Illinois, United States.

Here, Aman studied General Management and Marketing.

Working at different companies-

After completing his MBA, in July 2011, Aman joined KPMG in Gurgaon, India to work as a Senior Management Consultant.

He resigned for this job in February 2012.

And in March 2012, Aman joined Harman International to work as a Sales Head and then as Director-Sales.

He quit this job in December 2013.

Aman used to change jobs and quit them because he wasn’t able to develop interest in them.

Then, his wife gave him a time frame of two years to settle in any business or job and her condition was that if he failed to settle, he should pursue the career path that she would suggest.

Getting inspired by 3 Idiots & finding his passion-

During that time, Aman was inspired by the 3 Idiots film and the message that it portrayed of following one’s passion rather than trying to forcefully become successful at random things.

As he was passionate about gadgets, lifestyle products and marketing, he decided to start a company related to it.

In April 2014, Aman co-founded Imagine Marketing India in New Delhi and launched the House of Marley brand in India as a distributor and bought several audio products like headphones, audio systems, earbuds, etc.

Starting boAt-

In January 2016, Aman along with Sameer Mehta launched boAt.

boAt is headquartered in Mumbai.

In 2016, the competition was fierce as there were nearly 200 audio products brands in India and boAt faced competition from many Chinese, Japanese, German and Indian brands.

Setbacks-

Aman faced a lot of setbacks in the initial days as not many people were ready to join his company as they used to feel that boAt wouldn’t be in business for long.

As during that time, boAt wasn’t established and didn’t have assets, banks rejected them loans.

Some people also tried to pull him down citing high competition in the audio space and saying that this audio is a commoditized space which means that the audio products of all companies are almost similar, and there isn’t much scope of differentiating from the competition.

But as Aman was passionate about this business, he didn’t budge.

boAt was started with the co-founders’ money and eventually, boAt attracted many investors like Kanwaljit Singh of Fireside Ventures, Sachin Bansal, Innoven Capital, etc.

Initially, Aman started working from the Social café in Delhi and Sameer used to work from Mumbai.

The first product of boAt was the Apple charging-cable and charger.

Peer pressure-

Even though his friends settled in cosy, high-paying jobs, Aman didn’t give up working on boAt even when it was yielding less profits.

Thankfully, his father has been very supportive to him, he even financially helped him and only from 2020, he started taking salary from boAt.

Attracting Indian youth-

As a part of attracting youth, Aman hired young interns for marketing boAt.

This was an important step to understand the youth of the country because as he was above 30, he wasn’t young.

As the Indian youth is net-savvy, initially Aman focused only on digital marketing and he did digital marketing himself for boAt for the first couple of years.

Initially, as he wanted to be frugal, he didn’t hire a digital marketing agency.

After focusing on youth, Aman also focused on Indian millennials.

Tuned to India-

Aman observed that Indians like bass, so he launched several products with high bass.

Also, as India is a price conscious market, he made it a point to logically price the products.

As Indians love Bollywood, cricket and music, boAt took many actors, actresses, cricketers and singers as its brand ambassadors like-

• Kartik Aaryan
• Kiara Advani
• Jacqueline Fernandez
• Hardik Pandya
• Jasprit Bumrah
• Prithvi Shaw
• Shikhar Dhawan
• Rishabh Pant
• Shreyas Iyer
• KL Rahul
• Guru Randhawa
• Naezy
• Neha Kakkar
• Diljit Dosanjh
• Yo Yo Honey Singh, etc.

As the above mentioned celebrities have millions of followers, boAt became very popular by associating with them.

Apart from all these, boAt also partnered with Indian Premier League, Sunburn music festival and Lakmé Fashion Week.

His inspirations-

Aman is very inspired by Jeff Bezos of how he turned Amazon into a customer centric company and his aim is also to make boAt as consumer centric as possible.

He is also inspired by Shark Tank business reality television series.

In November 2021, Aman was announced as the Shark of Shark Tank India.

He has been awarded Entrepreneur of the Year in Product or Manufacturing Business- Consumer Durables by Entrepreneur Awards 2020.

In December 2021, Aman was awarded the Lokmat Most Stylish Entrepreneur of the Year award.

In 2021, he invested in a few companies like Shiprocket, WickedGud, Anveshan and 10club.

Becoming successful-

boAt is a profitable company and according to International Data Corporation (IDC), it is world’s top 5 Wearable Brand in Q4 2020 and Q1 2021 and in 2020, it became the top wearable brand in India beating giants like Samsung, Realme, Sony and Xiaomi.

boAt is popular for its headphones, speakers and wearables and offers its products in both online and offline channels.

It also launched personal grooming devices for men under the brand, Misfit.

So, how are you inspired by the success story of Aman Gupta?

Share with me in the comment section below.