Imagine Marketing Limited, the parent company of audio products and wearables brand boAt, Friday announced that it is raising about $60 million (Rs 500 crore) from its existing shareholder, an affiliate of private equity fund Warburg Pincus, and new investor Malabar Investments.
According to a report in The Economic Times, the company has also withdrawn its plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO). It had filed a draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) to raise Rs2,000 crore ($267 million) through a public issue of shares earlier this year.
South Lake Investment Ltd, an affiliate of Warburg Pincus, was looking to sell shares worth Rs800 crore in the IPO, while promoters Aman Gupta and Sameer Mehta were planning to sell shares worth Rs150 crore each. Mehta and Gupta together own over 50% shares in the company.
The fresh funding will enable the company to accelerate its plans to attain leadership in the smartwatches category, scale up its business across channels and geographies (both within and outside India), further strengthen its category leadership within audio, enhance its R&D and design capabilities, and support building a local manufacturing ecosystem under the Make-in-India initiative, per a statement.
“We have established clear leadership in our core personal audio category and are the number two player globally in earwear. 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,” said Aman Gupta, co-founder & chief marketing officer, of boAt.
Apart from growing in the core audio category and adding smartwatches as a second core, the company is making efforts in diversifying its manufacturing footprint via partnerships with various leading EMS players in India, including Dixon, with whom it has also created a manufacturing JV, the statement said.
A significant proportion of boAt’s products are now being produced in India, approximately a million units every month. The company is also putting plans in place to take the boAt brand overseas, it added.
Imagine Marketing was established in New Delhi in November 2013, while boAt was launched in 2014. The company had raised $100 million in its Series B funding from Warburg Pincus in January last year. Later in April, the company received an equity investment from Qualcomm Ventures.
boAt closed the financial year 2022 with net revenue of approximately Rs. 3,000 crore.