Boat is one of the most popular homegrown electronics brands in India today, but it has an unusual name — Boat doesn’t immediately seem to be the name of a company that makes headphones and earphones. Boat founder and Shark Tank judge Aman Gupta, however, has revealed how Boat got its name.
“There is a reason why we called it Boat,” he said on a podcast. “There are actually a few reasons, and you can decide which one you like,” he added.
“The first reason is A for Apple, B for Boat,” Gupta said. “Apple was already a brand, so we had to settle for Boat,” he smiled. Gupta seemed to be saying that the name boat was a nod at Apple, possibly the most successful consumer electronics company of all time.
“The second reason is that like GOAT is the Greatest Of All Time, Boat is Best Of All Time,” Gupta added.
“The third reason is that our tagline used to be “Plug into Nirvana”. So you go on a boat, you leave the land behind, you leave your worries behind. Similarly if you wear a Boat headphone, you plug into your own zone, plug into Nirvana. This is actually the real reason,” he said. “And if you notice the A in our logo, it has a boat inside it, which looks cool. It created a good visual icon,” he said.
“And I’ll tell you the fourth reason. When we were starting the company, there were lots of brands in the market whose names we couldn’t even pronounce,” Gupta said. “Yes, there were lots of Chinese brands in the market at that time,” the host replied. “Boat is a really easy name to remember in comparison. Everyone understands what a boat is. It’s not a tongue twister. It’s a very simple and easy name. And a story can always be made behind it,” Gupta added.
These are pretty interesting insights. Founders can often obsess for weeks to name their business, and try out all kinds of complex combinations and wordplay for their brands. Boat instead chose to go with a really simple name that everyone understood, and then built a story for the brand around that. And in a consumer-facing business where brand recall is everything, Boat’s disarmingly simple strategy seems to have paid off really well.