When Vivek Gambhir was appointed as CEO of audio and wearables brand Boat in February 2021, the company had just released its financials for the year ended March 2020. Its revenue had grown to around Rs 609.9 crore, while profits grew 4.9X to Rs 47.7 crore.

Even as Gambhir was signing on the dotted line, the company was on course to make those results look almost insignificant. Its annual revenue was set to cross Rs 1,320 crore for the year ended March 2021. In the same period, Boat clocked Rs 86.5 crore in profit.

Gambhir’s remit was to prepare Boat for bigger and better things, culminating in a public listing.

At the time, going public seemed almost inevitable. In Gambhir, Boat landed the outgoing CEO and Managing Director of Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL), one of the country’s largest FMCG brands. Boat, meanwhile, wasn’t just growing in terms of revenue and profit. Powered largely by its best-selling audio products, it had cornered around 42% of India’s wearables market and showed little sign of slowing down.