Noise: What it takes to go from ₹100 crores to ₹1,500 crore

Scaling a D2C brand from an early-stage business to a ₹1,000-crore company is still a rare feat in India. Doing so profitably, while remaining bootstrapped, makes the journey even more unusual. At a masterclass on scaling D2C brands at e4m D2C Summit 2026, Gaurav Khatri, CEO & Co-Founder, Noise, and Utsav Malhotra, COO, Noise, discussed the decisions, bets and consumer insights that shaped Noise's journey from its early D2C days to becoming one of India's leading home grown consumer technology brands.

Opening the conversation, Malhotra put the scale of the challenge in perspective. Out of an estimated 1,300–1,400 D2C brands in India, only about a dozen have reached ₹1,000 crores in revenue, while only around six have managed to do so profitably. He highlighted that Noise has achieved that scale while remaining bootstrapped.

His first question went straight to Khatri, ‘Was building Noise ever part of the plan?’

Khatri's answer made it clear that Noise was never a carefully mapped-out Plan A.

“To be very honest, it was neither a plan A, nor was it a plan B. It was just a hobby that was getting pursued for the time being till I found my commercial pilot job.”

He said that the starting point was his own experience as a consumer. A digitally savvy and frequent online shopper, he began noticing gaps in the market and experimenting with solutions.

“My journey started from, you know, as a consumer because I was a very, very shopaholic, online, digital savvy consumer and was trying to buy a lot of things online and could immediately see there is a lot of gap in the market and tried to solve that in the duration where I had a lot of free time,” he narrated. 

He shared that to him, the early advantage was not necessarily having a grand business vision, but identifying the right opportunity early.

Choosing the next category

Noise moved from accessories to audio and then wearables, eventually becoming the number one smartwatch brand in India and the third-largest globally. Malhotra challenged Khatri on what determined those moves, asking, was the company simply moving into the next attractive category, or was there a more deliberate framework?

Khatri said the expansion was calculated rather than opportunistic.

“The journey in Noise has always been very, very calculated in terms of identifying three, four questions.”

The first was the size of the opportunity.

“Number one is how big the category can be and does the category have the potential of not only giving a higher revenue, but at least reaching out to a large population and their demand.”

The next question was differentiation.

“The second thing is what is the differentiation that I can bring into the category? If there is no innovation that I can bring or there is no first mover advantage that I can bring, there is no design advantage that I can bring. I think we have not adopted any technology, any category.”

Wearables offered that opportunity because the category was still relatively new in India.

“For us, wearable was the space which was very new to the country or as a consumer space. And we just thought that if we really bring a differentiation here, there is an opportunity for creating a really large brand for the consumer who are already using mobile phones and they will be using a lot of new tech that will be coming in future.”

He eventually simplified the framework into three requirements: a strong category, room for differentiation and the potential to build a leading brand.

D2C is one pillar, not the entire business

That category discipline led Malhotra to another question relevant to the larger D2C ecosystem: what does D2C actually mean once a brand reaches scale?

Noise today operates across marketplaces, offline retail and modern trade. Malhotra further mentioned that the company itself is no longer dependent on a single direct-to-consumer channel.

“We are not a D2C brand per se. So the question really is, is D2C a business model anymore?,” he asked.

Answering it, Malhotra underscored, “A lot of you would not know that whilst we were bootstrapped and frugality was our middle name, D2C was our first channel. Contrary to popular belief, we were not a marketplace brand. We started with D2C.”

For him, the value of the channel was particularly important in the early stages because it gave Noise a direct understanding of product-market fit. “D2C allows you for a quick early product-market fit before you begin to scale, before you begin to sort of recalibrate your expectations for what the market needs,” he said.

Khatri agreed, but stressed that the larger value of D2C lies in the consumer intelligence it provides. “The obsession for anybody should be to have some knowledge about the customer, their own customers.”

A D2C website or app allows brands to understand what consumers like, what they do not, why they enter a category and where they drop out of the purchase journey.

As the business scales, he said, other channels become equally important.

“You would still need those bottom-funnel channels where all the consumer needs are being fulfilled, whether it is Amazon, Flipkart or whether it is quick commerce now,” he said

Lastly, he summarized, “D2C is important, it will remain relevant. But again, if I have to restart it, I would still go for D2C first.”

Bootstrapping: strategy or circumstance?

For a company often described as one of India's leading bootstrapped success stories, Malhotra then took the conversation to the question of capital.

Was bootstrapping a deliberate strategy, or did Noise simply get lucky enough to generate enough cash to keep funding its growth?

Khatri did not deny the role of luck in his journey. But he also explained that bootstrapping was not initially a strategic choice.

“Rather than having a choice of starting a business as a bootstrapped or raising a fund, I think I never had an option of raising a fund. I did not come from a background of a top college or a family or people around me who were raising funds. So, to be honest, I was so naive that I had no idea that there is a thing called raising funds,” he underlined. 

He further shared that their initial approach was to start small, use personal capital and build from there. He believes that those lack of resources eventually worked in the company's favour.

Why not take the exit?

Noise's strong fundamentals eventually attracted interest from large business groups, including opportunities for secondary transactions. Malhotra used that to push Khatri on a different question: if a significant cheque had been available, would he have taken it?

Khatri said there had been multiple such opportunities and acknowledged, “We had multiple chances where the large business groups of the country also reached out and wanted to give a secondary, wanted to give us exits and all.” But the company's mindset remained focused on the next milestone.

“Our obsession was that if we could build a 100 crore business, why not opt in for a 500 crore business? If you have achieved 500, why not try for 1000? If you achieve a thousand, why not take it global?”

He confidently accepted, “I was never chasing money honestly and hence was never diluted toward that.” Instead, it was about solving for consumers and building the kind of brand he had imagined growing up. I wish I could build a great global experience brand and I still focus toward building that rather than just focusing on money.”

What changes at ₹100 crores, ₹500 crores and ₹1,000 crores?

Noise's rise to the top of the smartwatch market brought another challenge: how does a founder keep the company moving when the business becomes significantly larger and more complex?

Malhotra framed the evolution in terms of the changing needs of the organisation.

“At hundred crores you're thinking about how we grow. At 500 you're thinking about how you keep the machine going without breaking it. At 1500 crores, you are sort of hoping that you don't get in the way of the machinery that is going today.”

Khatri's answer was that the founder-led approach that worked in the early years cannot remain unchanged forever.

“For an initial few hundred crores, I think as a founder or, you know, four or five people, the core team delivers that. You have a strong gut feeling, you are in the market, you are in touch with everything. That allows you to do that.”

But as the organisation expands, strong systems and discipline have to catch up at different stages.

He broke down the changing requirements in simple terms, stating, “100 crore requires a high speed. A 500 crore would require a high quality product. A thousand crore would require a high quality team.”

Sharing the way forward, he advised, “At different points, you need different obsessions. I think just adapting to them as early as possible allows you to just move faster.”

The practice Noise refuses to outgrow

Interestingly, when Malhotra asked what the company should have stopped doing three years ago, the answer was almost the opposite of what one might expect from a company at this scale.

The answer was listening to consumers.

Malhotra elaborated on what that means in practice, “Even till date, the senior leadership speaks to the consumers, the founders are putting themselves in front of consumers, looking at feedback, taking it on the chin.”

For him, this remains non-negotiable.

“And I think there is no real shortcut to building a consumer first brand where you don't put the consumer truly first.”

Khatri connected that consumer focus to one of the biggest challenges in technology businesses which was the speed at which categories can change.

“Technology, there is an advantage that it keeps on changing and it allows you to move ahead and still gives an opportunity to come again in the market and take a first mover advantage and move on. And the biggest disadvantage is that one wrong move can put you out of the market,” he cautioned. 

His answer is to go back to the consumer whenever the market shifts and he accepted that at noise, he has made that process part of its operating system.

“And I think now we have built this book into our system that I think let's just go to the consumer and ask what is his problem and why is he not buying this or what are the needs, how the needs have changed and I think evolve your technology towards that.”

He further advised the founder, “Customer obsession should be there in any D2C founder or any marketer or any product creator.”

Taking an India-built brand global

The consumer understanding developed in India has also helped Noise take its products to international markets. Malhotra emphasised on the brand's presence at global retail destinations including Printemps in Paris, Berlin, Selfridges in London and Virgin Megastore in Dubai.

“There are people who can buy a 50,000 rupees’ smartwatch. There are a huge number of people who want to buy a product in 5000. There are people that want to buy thousand rupees,” Khatri highlighted.

Serving such a broad consumer base, he said, helps brands develop products across price points and understand different consumer needs. But another important learning came from partnerships. Working with the right partners helped Noise understand how products developed for Indian consumers could potentially address international needs as well.

“When we were working with them, when we were co-creating products with them, we realised that these are the products that can genuinely go and solve problems not only for Indian needs. So, why not try it for a US need, why not try it for European customers?”, he questioned.

He said that two-way learning is now helping Noise expand internationally while bringing insights from those markets back to India.

The lesson from the Bose partnership

Partnerships became an even more important part of the conversation when Malhotra brought up Noise's collaboration with Bose, including the launch of Sound by Bose products in India and the co-development of products.

“Partnerships are a crucial part of any business. And landing up to the right partnership is, of course, a means to uplift yourself, your perception about yourself as a brand and whatnot,” Khatri emphasized, sharing the biggest learning from such partnerships goes back to the consumer.

He also mentioned that partnerships also reinforced a larger lesson about product development and how consumer check helps prevent founders from relying solely on instinct.

He advised young D2C founders, stating, “Just follow the consumer needs, speak to the consumer more than what you think.”

The Ultimate D2C Playbook

Towards the end of the session, Malhotra stripped the Noise story down to its most basic question: if everything was taken away, the brand, customers, scale and accumulated capital, and Khatri had just ₹1 crore, would he build Noise again?

His answer was yes.

“I may just follow the same journey that I had to start with my own D2C drive with a limited capital to quickly go to the limited consumer and speak to them and solve it. But probably what I will do differently is probably make those mistakes faster than what I took.”

That response brought the conversation back to the central theme of the masterclass. Scaling a D2C brand is not about finding one perfect formula. It is about making the right bets, learning quickly, changing the organisation as the business grows and, most importantly, staying close to the consumer.

Malhotra's closing observation captured the Noise journey succinctly, “0 To 1500 is no shortcut. It's a lot of small ideas put together that makes it large.”

He acknowledged that there were brilliant ideas, difficult moments and testing times. Some ideas worked and some did not. But the thread running through the journey was the willingness to keep listening, adapting and moving forward.

“So long as you hold your gumption, keep listening to the consumer, you'll be successful,” he concluded.