boAt is an Indian consumer electronics brand best known for earbuds and headphones, which also sells smartwatches, grooming devices and mobile accessories, almost all of it below ₹5,000. It is owned by Imagine Marketing Limited, which is preparing to list on the Indian exchanges. Two things matter most before buying: it is much bigger than its smartwatch position suggests, and in 2024 it lost the personal data of 7.5 million customers.
boAt is an audio brand first and a watch brand second. IDC put it at 14.1% of Indian smartwatch shipments in 2025, behind Noise at 26.6%. Its parent, Imagine Marketing, has filed an updated DRHP for a ₹1,500 crore IPO. Weigh all of that against April 2024, when the personal data of about 7.5 million boAt customers leaked.
Snapshot
- Founded
- 2015, India
- Founder
- Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta
- Headquarters
- India, with offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru
- Current owner
- Imagine Marketing Limited, privately held. Investors include Warburg Pincus, Malabar Investments and Fireside Ventures. About US$171 million raised. An updated DRHP for a ₹1,500 crore IPO was filed with SEBI in October 2025
- Category
- Audio first — earbuds and headphones — plus smartwatches, grooming and mobile accessories
- Price band in India
- Budget. Smartwatches sit largely below ₹5,000, against a category average selling price of about US$26.5
- Available in India
- Official — boat-lifestyle.com and major marketplaces
How it started
boAt was founded in 2015 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, under the parent company Imagine Marketing Limited. The insight was not technological. Indians were buying expensive phones and using the free earphones in the box, and there was no Indian brand making cables and earphones that looked good, survived daily use and cost a fraction of the international alternatives.
boAt attacked that gap with marketing rather than engineering — heavy celebrity and cricket associations, aggressive marketplace presence, and a rate of new product launches that no traditional audio company matched. Aman Gupta’s public profile did the rest.
Smartwatches came later, as an extension of the same model into a second category. That sequencing explains the brand’s position today: boAt is an audio company that also sells watches, not a watch company.
What they actually make
Audio is the core — wireless earbuds, headphones and speakers. Smartwatches, grooming devices and mobile accessories sit alongside it.
The scale gap between boAt’s total business and its watch position is the single most misunderstood thing about the brand, and it is worth being precise, because the two most-quoted figures point in opposite directions.
In wearables overall — a category dominated by earbuds, where boAt is strongest — boAt has been reported at around 27% share against Noise at about 13%.
- Noise26.6%, first
- boAt14.1%, second
- Fire-Boltt9.7%, third
boAt leads wearables overall, but not the watch category.
Both sets of numbers are real. They measure different things.
Quoting the wearables figure while discussing watches, which happens constantly, gets the ranking exactly backwards.
What boAt costs in India
boAt manufactures and sells in India, so there is no import duty premium of the kind that inflates Casio or Fossil pricing. Smartwatches sit largely below ₹5,000.
The commercial story is the same category squeeze that Noise faces.
| Indian wearables, 2025 (IDC) | Figure |
|---|---|
| Smartwatch shipments | Down 17.6% |
| Wearables market overall | Down 4.0%, to 114 million units |
| Average selling price | Around US$26.5 |
When hardware is this cheap and this similar between brands, discounting is the only lever left.
boAt’s own accounts show what that cost, and then what fixing it looked like.
- FY23Loss of ₹129.5 crore
- FY24Standalone loss of ₹79.7 crore
- FY25Standalone revenue of ₹3,089.6 crore and net profit of ₹64.2 crore
Consolidated profit crossed ₹60 crore in the same year.
That turnaround matters to a buyer for one practical reason: a company that has just fixed its margins ahead of an IPO has less room to discount than one buying share. Expect fewer deep cuts than in previous years.
Who boAt is actually for
boAt is a sensible buy if audio is your primary purchase and the watch is secondary. The earbuds are where the company’s competence actually sits, and buying both from one brand gives you a single app and one warranty channel.
As a first smartwatch below ₹5,000 it does the job: bright display, health tracking, calling, wide service availability. Indian manufacturing means no duty premium.
Skip boAt if the watch is the point of the purchase. Noise leads the smartwatch category on shipments and manufactures more of its own product. Skip it if long-term data privacy matters to you — see below, because that is not a hypothetical concern with this brand. And skip it if you want a watch that lasts; like all budget smartwatches, expect roughly two years before battery degradation and ended app support make it disposable.
Reputation and controversies
There is one significant, verified controversy, and it is serious.
In April 2024 the personal data of approximately 7.5 million boAt customers was leaked on a dark web forum. Forbes India reported the breach, and it was covered widely, with TechCrunch reporting that the company was investigating. For a consumer electronics brand whose products connect to a phone app and whose business depends on a direct customer database, a breach of that scale is not a peripheral IT problem — it is a failure in the part of the business that touches every buyer.
Anyone who bought from boAt before or around that period should assume their contact details are circulating, and treat unsolicited calls or messages referencing their orders with suspicion. That is the practical consumer consequence, and it is the reason this section exists.
Beyond the breach, we found no regulatory action, product recall, advertising adjudication or labour finding against boAt as of August 2026. The financial losses of FY23 and FY24 were commercial rather than a governance matter, and have since reversed.
Buying it in India
Buy from the brand’s own channels
Order from boat-lifestyle.com or the brand’s own storefront on a major marketplace.
Confirm who the seller is
On a marketplace, check the seller is the brand or an authorised seller rather than a third party.
Check the serial number on the earbuds
Counterfeit risk is real but concentrated in audio rather than watches, because the packaging is simple to copy and the price point invites it. Verify the serial number and warranty registration on the brand site.
Treat a steep discount as a warning
A heavy cut from an unknown seller usually means a “first copy”, the common Indian term for a counterfeit. Fake boAt earbuds are common in physical markets and in marketplace listings from third-party sellers.
For a watch, check the model is current
The more common problem here is not counterfeiting but discontinued models sold cheaply whose app support is ending. There is also no case for buying boAt abroad, since it is an Indian brand, made and sold here.
Common questions
Is boAt bigger than Noise?
In revenue and in wearables overall, yes — boAt reported ₹3,089.6 crore of standalone revenue in FY25. In smartwatches specifically, no: IDC put Noise first at 26.6% in 2025 and boAt second at 14.1%. The two figures measure different categories.
Who owns boAt?
Imagine Marketing Limited, founded in 2015 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta. It is privately held, with investors including Warburg Pincus, Malabar Investments and Fireside Ventures, and has raised about US$171 million. It filed an updated DRHP for a ₹1,500 crore IPO with SEBI in October 2025.
Was there a boAt data breach?
Yes. In April 2024 the personal data of around 7.5 million boAt customers was leaked on a dark web forum, first reported by Forbes India. If you ordered from boAt around that period, treat unsolicited calls or messages referencing your orders with caution.
Are boAt smartwatches good?
They are competent budget smartwatches with bright displays, health tracking and calling below ₹5,000. They are not the category leader — Noise ships more and manufactures more of its own product. boAt’s real strength is audio.
Is boAt an Indian brand?
Yes. boAt is owned by Imagine Marketing Limited, an Indian company founded in 2015 with offices in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. Because it manufactures and sells in India, its prices carry no import duty premium.
How we research and verify brand audits: our methodology.
References
- Outlook Business — founding in 2015 by Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta, parent Imagine Marketing, FY23 loss of ₹129.5 crore, FY24 standalone loss of ₹79.7 crore, FY25 standalone revenue of ₹3,089.6 crore and net profit of ₹64.2 crore, consolidated profit above ₹60 crore, investors Warburg Pincus, Malabar Investments and Fireside Ventures, and about US$171 million raised
- Business Standard, 29 October 2025 — the updated DRHP filed with SEBI for a ₹1,500 crore IPO
- Forbes India, April 2024 — the leak of personal data belonging to approximately 7.5 million boAt customers on a dark web forum
- Business Standard, 8 April 2024 — independent coverage of the same breach
- TechCrunch, 8 April 2024 — the company investigating the breach
- BizTechReports, reporting IDC, April 2026 — smartwatch shipments falling 17.6% in 2025, the wearables market down 4.0% to 114 million units, and the 2025 smartwatch shares of Noise, boAt and Fire-Boltt shown in the diagram
Buy boAt for audio, where it is genuinely the best Indian option — for a smartwatch, Noise leads on both share and manufacturing.
