The global brand Bose that isn't Indian

There was so much din and noise in recent days about Indian brands that were created post-1947. Reams were written in the media, and many successful brands were lauded for having made their mark in post-independent India. Sadly, even after 75 years, we still can’t boast of very many global brands that India has created in the decades gone by. Sure the Tatas export many of their products and their brand name is well-recognised in some parts of the world; Airtel Africa is proud proof of an Indian-born brand flourishing overseas; but there is little else.

The world’s best known “Indian” brand is Bose. But nothing except its Bengali name is really Indian.

The story of Bose began with the story of a boy fascinated by electronics — taking things apart, figuring out how they worked and dreaming of one day inventing his own. Teenaged Amar Bose built a successful radio repair service out of his family’s home in Abington, Pennsylvania. “We put up signs in all the little hardware stores where my father used to sell his imported goods,” Bose once told an interviewer. “The signs said, ‘We repair radios.’ So people would drop off their radios at the store and I’d take them home and repair them, and we’d give the store 10 per cent of the invoice. I had a little pact with my father that if my grades remained good, I could go to school only four days a week, and he would write an excuse saying I had a headache or something. The teachers all knew this; it was always on a Friday and so on Monday, they’d ask me, ‘How many radios did you fix, Bose?’” And that is how brand Bose was germinated.

The Bose company was founded in Massachusetts in 1964. Bose’s interest in speaker systems had begun in 1956 when he purchased a stereo system but was disappointed with its performance. While at MIT, Bose amassed a number of patents and instead of licensing them to another company, he decided to keep them and start a company of his own. In the early years, Bose would spend time at MIT with his teaching duties and he would work on government and NASA contracts, and then at night he would come back and put in what he called the “second shift”— when he would start working on all of his audio ideas.

In 1966, the Bose 2201 was the first product launched by the company. It was shaped like an eighth of a sphere so it could be tucked into the exact corner of a room. Its 22 transducers projected sounds in various directions, bouncing them off the walls and the floor of a room. The goal was to create something close to the acoustic version of a “pulsating sphere” in the room — a theoretical ideal in sound. But the “technical tour de force” was an utter commercial failure.

In 1968, the company introduced the Bose 901 stereo speaker system, which used eight mid-range drivers pointing towards the wall behind the speaker, and a ninth driver towards the listener. The purpose of this design was to achieve a dominance of reflected over direct sound in home listening spaces. The design used in the 901 was unconventional compared with most systems, where mid-range and high-frequency speakers directly faced the listener. The 901 was an immediate commercial success. The rest, as they say, is history. Last year, Bose Corporation’s annual sales were $3.2 billion, and the company employed approximately 7,000 people.

Bose headphones are worn today by professional pilots and have been worn by space shuttle astronauts. Its car audio systems have been factory-installed in luxury brands such as Maserati and Maybach. Bose speakers were the first audio system custom built for the interiors of the 1983 Cadillac Seville. And the list of achievements stretches on.

Forget the speakers, the Bose logo itself has always fascinated me. It is made up of a simple wordmark. But it’s not a boring, outdated or static design. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. The Bose logo is a slightly italicised logo, slanting to the right to give off the feeling of movement. The Bose brand name is made up of block-like lettering. It’s big and bold and bubbly, but also carries with it a very edgy, angular and geometric vibe that calls back to the brand’s technical roots. I just love it.

So what has made a brand launched by a professor of Indian descent in the US such a world beater that his parent nation of 1.4 billion people has not been able to catch up? I think, first and foremost, it has been relentless research; which has led to unparalleled innovation; and resulted in unbeatable excellence, such that Bose has become the platinum standard of the audio industry. Few Indian brands are that passionate, or that possessed. Or that proud.

The writer is managing director of Rediffusion