Vivek Gambhir, who was till June last year spearheading Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, has joined as the chief executive officer of consumer electronics brand boAt.
Gambhir will be working closely with the co-founders of the Warburg Pincus-backed brand.
He had joined Godrej Industries in 2009 as chief strategy officer and was at the helm of Godrej Consumer Products for around eight years during which the FMCG major’s revenues grew nearly four times to over Rs 10,000 crore.
Before joining Godrej, the Harvard Business School graduate was a founding member of Bain & Company’s consulting operations in India. He led Bain & Company’s FMCG and telecom practices in India.
Mumbai-based boAt was founded in 2016 by Sameer Mehta and Aman Gupta. The startup’s product catalogue includes headphones, earphones, wearables, speakers, and related accessories such as chargers and cables. It claims, citing International Data Corporation (IDC), a 20% share in India’s earwear segment.
boAt, operated by Imagine Marketing Pvt Ltd, early this year raised nearly $100 million from US-based buyout fund Warburg Pincus.
The startup claims to have generated at least Rs 500 crore in gross revenues for the financial year 2019-20. It reported net sales of Rs 239.44 crore and a profit after tax of Rs 8.73 crore for the financial year ended March 2019, according to VCCEdge.
The firm had received a commitment of Rs 20 crore in venture debt from Flipkart co-founder Sachin Bansal last year, according to media reports. In May 2018, boAt raised Rs 6 crore from Bengaluru-based early stage venture firm Fireside Ventures.
