Again another small town startup enters into scene with smart audio tech.
Rapture Lab is a new company with a lot of potential. People have always wanted a great home theatre experience with amazing visuals and sound, and they’re willing to spend money on it. This has created a market that many companies making audio and video products want to be a part of. Even though lots of companies have spent billions of dollars trying to make perfect audio products, they’re still not accessible for many people who love good sound.
That’s where startups like Rapture Innovation Lab come in. It was started by Navajith Karkera and Jagath Bidappa and is based in Hubballi, with support from the Deshpande incubator. This audio technology company claims to have made a big breakthrough in creating “Hybrid driver acoustics,” and it took them three years of hard work to perfect this technology.
As explained by the creators, their product uses a fresh idea to produce sound. They’ve patented the “air and bone-body conduction” technique, which lets a pair of headphones imitate the sound produced by a full set of audio drivers and subwoofer systems. This means you can have a movie theatre-quality audio experience without sacrificing the convenience of headphones. When you put on these headphones, you can enjoy music like Beethoven, Bollywood tunes, or any bass-heavy music just as if you were in a movie theatre.
Thanks to the built-in subwoofer, the creators say that thunderstorms, live shows, and concerts will never be the same. The sound is so loud and clear that it feels like you’re right in the middle of the action, and you might even find yourself dancing with pure joy.
Their technology, called Sonic Lamb, along with special earpads, can mimic the power of a subwoofer to provide the deepest and most intense bass. This offers an extraordinary experience, especially for those who love powerful bass in their music.
The company recently introduced its first product, the Sonic Lamb headphones, with a quiet launch. Surprisingly, they received 570 pre-orders from customers in 50 different countries. The founders mentioned that over 60 percent of these orders came from the United States.
The company handles everything related to the design and development of the product in-house, except for a few components that they import. They collaborate with a manufacturer in Delhi for production, and the final packaging is completed in Chennai. Right now, the team is aiming to deliver all the pre-ordered products by the end of July 2023.
Sonic Lamb has to go head-to-head with well-established audio giants like Bose, Sony, Sennheiser, and JBL, among others. However, the market is always open to newcomers who can shake up the current trends. Ultimately, it’s the quality of their product that will do the talking and perhaps make their competitors a little nervous.
The founders are optimistic about soon establishing experience centers in big cities and even in smaller, Tier 2 cities to introduce their products. If they can quickly set up a strong distribution and after-sales service network, they have the potential to boost sales in India and other places in a short time. Building a strong brand is, of course, a key part of their task.
The founders claim that the sound quality of Sonic Lamb headphones matches the best headphones their competitors sell for $300. This means that you can get the same top-notch immersive experience for just $199, which is quite exciting.
According to the founders, their goal is to manufacture and sell 5,000 units by the end of this year. After achieving this milestone, they plan to ramp up production and distribution even further.
In India, there’s a tendency for multinational companies to favor major cities and commercial hubs when setting up their engineering centers. This bias has concentrated wealth in a few large Indian cities, and it has often required talented individuals to relocate to these cities for work, contributing to the urban congestion. The success of companies like Rapture Innovation Labs is likely to encourage CEOs to reconsider Tier 2 cities with a more positive outlook.
With uninterrupted broadband connections and advanced 5G mobile technology, jobs will follow where the talent is, instead of the other way around. Companies will start establishing smaller engineering centers in promising Tier 2 cities like Hubballi, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Kalburgi, and Belgaum in Karnataka. This approach is more cost-effective for organizations, as many skilled individuals may not be willing to relocate to a major city due to a lower quality of life there. When jobs shift to Tier 2 cities, wealth will also be spread more evenly across India.
ndia is a hub for engineering and innovation.
Many of us tend to buy products solely based on the brand name. The stronger the brand’s reputation, the more likely we are to trust and accept its products. We often assume that most multinational corporations (MNCs) invest heavily in marketing, and their products must be designed, engineered, and manufactured in places known for their exceptional quality.
What many people may not be aware of is that almost all MNCs that produce goods have their design and innovation centers right here in India. Their products are frequently designed and innovated by Indian engineers.
India has a significant advantage in this regard because of the presence of numerous prestigious technical institutions such as IITs, IISC, RIEs, and engineering colleges. The country has a high concentration of English-speaking technical talent, making it highly attractive for MNCs to establish their engineering centres here.
Now, it’s time for Indian companies to step into the spotlight. They should introduce products that are not only designed in India but also engineered and manufactured here. The quality of Indian products is truly exceptional, and for the world to embrace Indian products, they need to be well-received and successful within India first. This is how Japanese, Korean, and Taiwanese products gained international recognition after becoming big hits in their home countries. India should follow the same path for its products.
To succeed in foreign markets, Indian companies need to leverage well-established distribution networks and provide excellent customer support worldwide. They should emulate what Japan did in the 1970s and 1980s and what Korean and Taiwanese companies achieved in the 2000s.
In this context, the success of startups like Rapture Innovation Labs holds great importance for India’s overall strategy.
