boAt Lifestyle has dumped its Initial Public Offering plans, instead it revealed today that it has secured an investment of $60 million (Rs 500 crore) from an current shareholder, an affiliate of Warburg Pincus, and new investor Malabar Investment.
The new capital will help the company to pursue growth for its smartwatches category and establish a localised manufacturing capabilities. The company CMO earlier twitted – produced 1 million units within a quarter and are committed towards nation-building, one step at a time.
“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 smart watches spaces with more innovative products. And we are thrilled that investors continue to have strong conviction and confidence in the boAt story,” Aman Gupta, Co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer, said in a statement.
The company cited subdued, unfavorable market sentiments as the reason for the withdrawal of its Rs 2000 crore-initial public offering (IPO) plan, as per reports. boAt follows the list of several other startups that have deferred listing plans this year. You may recall, boAt released its draft prospectus document in February this year.
boAT aims to attain, consolidate leadership in wrist wearables
The nine-year-old company, which rose to become the most successful direct-to-consumer brands in the country with leadership in the earphones segment, now focusses to be a market leader in the smartwatches segment.
The wrist wearables category has shown great promise in India in terms of consumption. Market research firm IDC,in a report has commented wrist wearables as the high-growth category for the April-June period, with shipping soaring nearly four-fold at 6.4 million units against 1.6 million units in the year-ago quarter.
Noise and Fire-Boltt ranked among the top two companies in the smartwatch segment in the last quarter while boAt slipped to the third position, making India the second-largest smartwatch market in the world after the US.
