‘We are lucky… everybody has eye on India market,’ Noise founder on Bose tie-up

But can it be too demanding for an Indian brand to work with a company that has for decades set the industry standards globally? “These guys come from a DNA where they have always looked at perfection. Bose is known for great acoustics, great engineering… so it took us a long time to climb here. Our product has gone through multiple iterations; we have learnt a lot from them,” Khatri said, adding that the interactions with Bose helped Noise build. 

“Actually, they have trained our teams. This is in their interest, because they have invested in us… and they tested all the products in the Bose labs.” Khatri accepted that it was a given since Bose was putting their logo on the new Noise Master Buds. “If there is a Bose logo, it has to be best in class.”

Over the years, Noise has grown into one of the leading smart wearables brands in India, topping the smartwatches segment with 27.4% market share. It is also the first Indian brand to become the third largest globally with most of its products made in the country. 

When it comes to the Master Series, Khatri said the idea was to bring premium audio experience at a flexible price point. “That involves tuning and software, and Bose has a lot of IPs in hardware also. They helped us definitely to learn and build great hardware and specifically acoustically tuning this product.”

Khatri explained that as the Indian audio market evolves, they are noticing a lot of repeat buyers who are going up the value chain, towards noise cancelling too. “People will understand what noise cancellation is also… when brands like ours start coming in and educating users about it, I think the market will automatically become true.”

Noise, like a lot of other consumer brands, is focusing on building an ecosystem of its devices. “We have a large user base for watches and people now want to take calls from watches. So we are trying to look at seamless connectivity, where I control and operate my earphones from the watch.” Also, he said the focus is clearly on going deeper, especially with AI. “How can we make technology accessible and seamless to the user? How could it become a part of the everyday interaction they have,” Khatri said these are the problems the company wants to solve. 

On the tech ecosystem coming into place for manufacturing in India, Khatri said challenges have always existed, especially in terms of lack of capital and a trained workforce. “But we are learning and enough KT (knowledge transfer) is happening.” But he is optimistic since there is now support from the government and “we are getting the entire ecosystem from Southeast Asian countries to set up the component level manufacturing” in India.