Cutting through the noise

THE SUCCESS OF ONE OF INDIA'S LEADING WEARABLES COMPANY LIES IN REMAINING ALERT ENOUGH TO TUNE INTO THE RIGHT FREQUENCIES

- ANEES HUSSAIN

FRESH OFF THE PLANE from Philippines in 2010, commercial pilot's licence in hand, 24-year-old Gaurav Khatri was ready to take off. However, India's aviation industry was then in free fall — Air India was haemorrhaging money; Kingfisher Airlines had shuttered; and there were just no takers for pilots.

Back in Bikaner, the criticism began in earnest. "There was a lot of noise around me," Khatri recalls. "Everybody was telling me to do this, do that. You have not been able to get a pilot job. You should have been an engineer. You should do an MBA, etc etc."

While the external noise—family pressure, societal expectations, career advice from every direction—went on, Khatri found sanctuary in an unlikely place: the internet. Not the seamless broadband experience of today, but the patience-testing, ear-splitting dial-up connections of the time. "I love that sound still," he says. He spent hours browsing eBay, recognising patterns of how the world was consuming. I had begun to understand that the upcoming internet explosion in India would create massive opportunities for direct-to-consumer brands (D2C).

When family pressure mounted, his cousin Amit (now co-founder of boAt) offered a lifeline: free access to his contract manufacturing business supplying to the likes of H&M, Zara, and Gap. During a 2014 morning tea session, everything changed. Amit paused at a massive Xiaomi advertisement on a leading newspaper daily. "If we need to do something, we need to think this big," he told Khatri.