Noise to launch premium smartwatches by year-end, says founder

Noise, which has been ranked India’s top wearable watch brand by research firm IDC, could launch its first premium smartwatch by the end of 2021, co-founder Amit Khatri told Indianexpress.com. Currently, the brand offers wearables under Rs 7,000. The upcoming premium smartwatches could fall under the Rs 15,000 price segment, he hinted.

Wearables as a category is growing fast with people willing to spend on health monitoring gadgets to stay fit, especially during the pandemic. This has allowed home-grown brands like Noise to break into the top five wearable companies in India in just a few years, especially because of their affordable price tags.

“We are working on a few products which have new-age technology and features, and we’ll be launching them at a premium price point. You could see the high-end smartwatch portfolio by the end of this year,” Khatri said.

“The focus will be on giving more insights to the users about the data that is coming from the device. The design of the wearables will also get better,” he said, without giving more details. “They will help increase productivity, and you will be able to attend calls,” he added, calling the latter one of the big functions they were working on.

Khatri, however, said there is no real use case to add NFC in a smartwatch at the moment. “The devices are well-equipped… but we don’t see there is a critical mass for that. We keep on interacting with the community so the feature has not taken the high ground.” He said the company is focusing on offering those features that are essential to a consumer, and it doesn’t follow a low-margin, high-volume strategy.

Noise wants to focus on improving the current portfolio, rather than launching scores of products in a short period, he added. “We believe in building hero products which means we do not intend to throw a plethora of products into the market. We would have limited products and we’ll meet them here also,” he said.

Currently, the brand is focusing on budget wearables and in this segment, Khatri claimed Noise had around 40 per cent market share in past months. According to a report published by IDC, Noise managed to retain its position at the top of the watch sales chart in Q1 2021 with 26.7 per cent of market share.

Khatri revealed that the company has successfully sold more than a million units of ColorFit Pro 2 and hinted that the ColorFit Pro 4 could soon launch in India. “The successor to the ColorFit is the best seller watch in India till date as we sold more than a million units. And the third generation watch is crossing those numbers now, and now we are already working on a successor of it.”

Currently, Noise has no plans to enter a new category as it wants to focus on the existing portfolio. “We don’t want to lose our focus from this area as we want to really excel here first and then move on to the other areas. We will be launching products that will be an industry first, which will give us an edge,” Khatri explained.

Talking about Noise’s offline presence, he said, “We’re strengthening our distribution, so our offline footprint is getting stronger day by day. The offline distribution is the last step which we have to cover and we started working on it.”

The brand believes its position in the audio category will become stronger by Q4 2021. “Right now we are in the top five also in the audio space, and we see that position moving upwards,” Khatri said.