One quit a bank job in six months to dabble with chargers, cables and speakers before on to float a company that made a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore in the last fiscal and dreams of being on a par with Apple.
Another started his journey as a 19-year old trying to digitise maps while studying electrical engineering and is now the founder of a company that boasts of designing maps with features that Google Maps doesn’t provide.
Aman Gupta, co-founder and chief marketing officer (CMO) of boAt, and Rohan Verma, chief executive officer and executive director of MapmyIndia, shared their success stories with students of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta (IIMC) at Lattice, the annual business conclave of MBAEx (one-year full-time residential MBA), on August 19.
Aman Gupta showed the audience a PPT on his life and the journey of founding boAt
How Aman Gupta sailed his boAt
Aman Gupta shot to fame with Shark Tank India and his journey of establishing boAt as an Indian earwear audio brand in 2016 with his co-founder Sameer Mehta is inspiring to every entrepreneur.
Speaking at IIM Calcutta, Gupta recalled: “I completed CA because my father wanted me to take ahead the legacy. But once I got my degree, I told him that I would now go my way. The journey wasn’t smooth. After trying a number of things, I decided to join MBA because that was the trend. After completing the degree, I was (mis)placed in a bank where I realised I couldn’t continue. I quit in six months.”
Gupta then started taking interest in products like chargers, cables, speakers, etc. He joined Harman to understand how the business works. “My term at Harman is what I call a paid learning experience. I was learning everything from business to marketing there which I would apply in my own start-up.” After five unsuccessful ventures, finally Gupta’s boAt was afloat.
The company made a turnover of Rs 4,000 crore last financial year and it is looking forward to close at Rs 7,000 crore this quarter. The company offers a variety of products ranging from headphones, earphones, speakers, soundbars, travel chargers to smartwatches. boAt aims to provide affordable, durable, and fashionable audio products to the young and trendy consumers of India.
The auditorium was houseful at IIM Calcutta on Saturday
“The company has grown rapidly in the past few years and has become one of the leading players in the Indian wearables market. Last month, I was in France with Narendra Modi along with other big CEOs from India for the Indo-French CEO Forum. There, I said that my vision was that one day French people will buy boAt products like people buy Apple. That day boAt will be successful and Make in India will go international.”
boAt has also partnered with several celebrities and sports personalities such as Diljit Dosanjh, Shreyas Iyer, Hardik Pandya, and Kiara Advani to promote its brand. Gupta’s energy and spirit left the audience applauding for him. He ended his address with his signature tagline from Shark Tank India: “Ao Hum Bhi Bana Lenge” (We will also make it happen).
Rohan Verma of MapmyIndia addresses students at IIM Calcutta
How Rohan Verma mapped India
Rohan Verma started his journey as a 19-year old trying to digitise mapping while studying electrical engineering at Stanford University. He has been instrumental in bringing innovative and disruptive products to the Indian geospatial industry such as GPS navigation systems, self-driving car technologies, IoT devices, enterprise SaaS solutions, and consumer apps. “I started my journey even before Google Maps entered India. I was studying at Stanford University when my father, the founder of MapmyIndia, asked if we could digitise the maps. I started my research and back in 2004, I sat down with a programmer and we worked out how one could find the nearby places on the Internet. Google Maps came in 2005 only,” said Verma, whose father Rakesh Verma and mother Rashmi Verma founded MapmyIndia in 1995.
According to Verma, the digitisation of maps began in India with MapmyIndia but as Google entered the market as pre-installed apps on Android phones, they faced a massive setback. “Google Maps were installed already so we had to do something new. That’s when we decided to go hyperlocal. Our maps not only gave updates about the road closures and traffic but also started updating about potholes etc. Indian mapping is difficult with complex addresses. We focused on that aspect and we can now say that we are the biggest competitors of Google in the Indian market.”
The attendees listen to the entrepreneurs rapt in attention