You know the founder. The one who’s always on your screen.
If you’ve spent even ten minutes watching Shark Tank India or scrolled through Instagram, you’ve seen Aman Gupta, the co-founder and CMO of boAt, more than some of your own friends. He’s in boAt’s high-octane ads, on memes, podcasts, and panels. He’s hyping the brand, the category, and himself in one seamless feed.
With each appearance, Gupta reinforces one truth: boAt is Aman. Aman is boAt.
It’s a brand strategy few Indian startups have pulled off with such intensity. And for a while, it’s worked wonders. Founded in 2016, boAt disrupted the personal audio market with cool, affordable earwear for India’s youth. By 2022, it had a 40% market share in earphones and became India’s fifth-largest wearable brand by volume. But as it grew louder, so did its founder’s personal presence.
This isn’t new. We’ve seen personal brands dominate in Indian business before—Dhirubhai Ambani, Narayana Murthy, even Vijay Mallya. But in the D2C, Instagram, influencer-first era, founders like Aman Gupta, Nikhil Kamath, and Falguni Nayar aren’t just storytellers. They are the story.
Harish Bijoor, brand consultant and founder of Harish Bijoor Consults Inc., calls it “the chicken-and-egg syndrome.”
“Which comes first: the founder or the company? And which holds more value?” he asks. “Founders begin with the brand, and over time, their personal brand can grow larger—sometimes even outgrowing the company itself. This can be both good and bad.”
For now, it’s mostly good. boAt has gone from being a scrappy upstart to a lifestyle brand. Gupta’s TV stardom has made boAt visible to more than just Gen Z urbanites. His Shark Tank persona—approachable, loud, business-savvy—gives the brand a real-world hook in an ecosystem crowded with copycats.
But what happens when the founder becomes too big?
“It’s smart—but only if you know the exit plan,” says Vikram Kharvi, CEO of Bloomingdale PR. “Tying a brand’s image to a charismatic founder can be a powerful storytelling device… But what happens when the founder wants to step away? Or worse, gets caught in a reputational crisis?”
The risk isn’t theoretical.
Take Kingfisher Airlines. “The Kingfisher brand associated with Vijay Mallya was a global premium brand till the Founder had to escape India on charges of siphoning off money from the bank,” says Dinesh Jotwani, Supreme Court advocate and Co-Managing Partner at Jotwani Associates. “So the brand valued in lakhs of crores was mortgaged to a bank and then subsequently sold outside India for it to survive.”
The cautionary tale? Founders or brand makers die, step down, or get canceled. If your brand is indistinguishable from its founder, you’ve just bet the company on one person’s lifetime of good behaviour.
Jotwani draws a sharp contrast: “Founders dying isn’t the issue. We saw this in the case of Ratan Tata.” The Tata brand, he says, was always bigger than the man—even when he was its face.
For Kharvi, that’s the sweet spot: making the founder a visible but swappable figurehead. “Start early. Institutionalise the founder’s vision, shift focus from persona to purpose and use the founder as a supporting character,” he advises. Think Infosys, not Kingfisher. Think Tanishq, not Snapdeal.
But there’s a reason so many startups take the founder-led route—especially in India.
According to Edelman’s 2023 Trust Barometer, 70% of Indian consumers trust a company more when the founder is front-facing. People connect with people—not logos. In an attention economy, charisma outperforms copywriting.
“Personal branding, especially when amplified through a charismatic founder, has become a defining force in corporate reputation,” says Kharvi. “Globally, we’ve seen how figures like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, or closer home, Nikhil Kamath and Falguni Nayar, shape not just their companies’ narratives, but influence investor confidence, media attention, and consumer sentiment. It’s magnetic but also volatile.”
Pearl Agarwal, founder and managing director of Eximius Ventures, breaks it down: “It drives distribution, breaks through noise, and helps connect with emotion. Attracting talent, capital, and customers becomes easier when there’s a compelling face to the brand. But as the company scales, the product must begin to outweigh the persona.”
For her, it all comes down to succession. “Charisma isn’t a strategy. Succession is. Sustained growth demands a strong leadership team, clarity in planning, and founders who know when to step back and let the company speak for itself.”
That’s something Prateek N. Kumar, CEO and MD of NeoNiche Integrated Solutions, consciously invested in after COVID. “In the early stages, yes—it can be incredibly powerful. A founder’s story, vision, and conviction often become the foundation of a brand’s emotional connect. But over time, the brand must grow beyond the founder. The moment a business becomes dependent on one person, it becomes fragile.”
Kumar shares that he’s “never fronted the brand solo.” Instead, his agency built collective credibility by pushing forward a multi-founder narrative. “We created space for new voices, new ideas, and most importantly, new accountability.”
In other words, build a brand that works without the founder—even when the founder still works there.
boAt isn’t quite there yet. Its brand tone, identity, and even meme strategy are tightly tethered to Gupta’s personality. And there’s no sign he’s slowing down. But if the company wants to sustain its scale (or someday go public), it’ll need to start putting the brand before the man.
That’s not to say Gupta should disappear. But as Kharvi puts it, “The founder should shift from being the brand’s mouthpiece to being its muse.”
The challenge is knowing when that shift must begin. Too early, and you lose connection. Too late, and you risk brand collapse.
As Agarwal says, “Great founders don’t just build companies. They build long-lasting continuity.”
boAt may still ride the Aman wave a little longer. But eventually, even the best headphones have to speak for themselves.