Atomberg
- Jinal Sanghavi
- May 26
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 3
You can listen to us on
Atomberg Technologies, popular for their energy efficient fans, is one of the few D2C-first brands in India focused on bringing real value to the masses by being tech and product-first and manufacturing inhouse in India. They do this through smart energy savings technology (eg. BLDC motors) and modern design, innovating in a largely ignored small home appliances business (eg. ceiling fans). It recently hit INR 1000 Cr ARR, a big milestone and one few new-age companies have achieved so far. For comparative benchmarks, Mamaearth is at ~1900 cr and boAt at ~3000 cr.
The company was seeded in IIT Bombay's Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE). Cofounders, Manoj Meena and Shibam Das are technologists at heart, who dabbled with multiple business models and pivoted a number of times before hitting their Aha! moment, and seeing an opportunity to revolutionalize the $60bn home appliances industry. Early on, they were joined by Arindam Paul, currently the Chief Business Officer, who has been instrumental in cracking distribution for the team. He is a marketing guru sharing who share real deal x No Fluff lessons to help others professionals and upcoming startups.
In this episode, we discuss how they first focused on B2B and then moved B2C, the background of the founders and the company's founding story, its products and BLDC technology and key marketing actions that have helped them disrupt a competitive and fragmented small home appliances industry. We also share our take on the way forward for the company with two potential path forwards: 1) Likely will be acquired by one of the industry stalwarts like Crompton or Orient. Like Minimalist by HUL; 2) Build on an Indian opportunity to be truly insurgent and innovative like a Dyson for the masses. The latter is the more exciting one. And, the one we are rooting for.
Key topics discussed along with timestamps:
00:00 – 03:00: Introduction and Setting Context
03:00 – 07:00: Early Product Experience and Brand Penetration
07:00 – 10:00: Founding Story and Early Pivots
10:00 – 13:00: Discovery of BLDC Fans and Product-Market Fit
13:00 – 17:00: Investors and Key Backers
17:00 – 22:00: Indian Fan Industry and Market Landscape
22:00 – 27:00: Consumer Trends and Competitive Landscape
27:00 – 33:00: Company Mission and Founders’ Backgrounds
33:00 – 38:00: Product Portfolio and Differentiation
38:00 – 45:00: Business Strategy and Sales Channels
45:00 – 52:00: Distribution Playbook and Insights
52:00 – end: Marketing & Brand Building
Industry Landscape
India’s Home Appliances segment is $64B and Small Appliances, which includes Vaccuum Cleaners, Irons, Toasters, etc) - $25Bn. Fans occupy a very small part of this market at $1.2B ~ 10,000 Crores. We sell about 45-50Mn fans a year and have more than 200 players both branded and unbranded. And now BLDC fans, the kind Atomberg sells have only around 20% penetration now but is fast growing at ~30%+ CAGR. The fans market is dominated by some really old players like Crompton, Orient, Bajaj Electricals, and Havells. These companies have been around since the 1930s and 40s! Crompton leads the pack with a big distribution network, holding about 28% of the market. Havells is strong in the premium segment. Then you have Orient Electric, which is gaining ground by innovating with energy-efficient designs. Bajaj Electricals also has a solid presence, with fans making up a good chunk of their revenue. Atomberg comes in about a decade ago and innovates in a largely ignore fan sector to reach about 10% Market Share today, roughly half of the leader in the market.
BLDC fans are rapidly gaining market share in India, with penetration expected to reach 30–35% by 2025 end, up from 10–15% in 2023. Today, a number of players offer BLDC fans including Bajaj, Orient, Havells, Pigeon, etc
What’s so great about BLDC? BLDC fans consume 50–65% less energy than traditional fans, making them attractive for both residential and commercial use. BLDC fans typically save around ₹1500 per year in electricity costs, meaning the fan essentially pays for itself in about 2 to 2.5 years. The average price of an Atomberg fan is around ₹3,500, making the energy savings a compelling value proposition.
Founding Story
Atomberg Technologies Private Limited was established in 2012 by Manoj Meena and Sibabrata Das, graduates of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. The founding vision stemmed from the founders' engineering background, particularly in robotics and motors, and a desire to build meaningful, scalable, and impactful products for Indian homes by addressing latent consumer problems. A core tenet was to leverage technology to create energy-efficient and smart home appliances, moving beyond the incremental changes offered by incumbent players. From 2012 to 2015, Atomberg worked on various technical projects involving motors. But they soon realized this approach wasn’t scalable. So in 2015, they pivoted and decided to focus on creating a real product using their expertise in motors and electronics—specifically, BLDC fans.
Atomberg's Product Portfolio
Fans is their core product offering. Since entering the market in 2015, Atomberg has launched 20+ models of smart fans under different categories such as ceiling, wall, exhaust, and pedestal. The products are available across 30000+ offline retail stores. The fan portfolio includes popular series such as Renesa, Efficio, Aris, Studio+, and Ameza, catering to various aesthetic preferences and functional needs.
Key features across the range include significant energy savings, remote control operation, smart home integration (via the Atomberg Home App, compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant), integrated LED lighting options, timer and sleep modes, multiple speed settings, and sleek, modern designs.
Accessories: Complements its main products with a range of accessories, including fan remotes, blades, canopies. In a small way, exports have started. As of 2024, Atomberg fans are being sold in Bangladesh.
Apart from fans, Atomberg also makes mixer-grinders and locks, building on its core motor and smart technology expertise. The mixers are more compact, more powerful and most importantly operate at lower dB levels. With smart locks, it has now entered the home security market with smart locks offering multiple keyless access methods (fingerprint, PIN code, NFC card, mobile app, remote OTP). Atomberg emphasizes its security features, convenience, and data privacy, highlighting that its app is 'Made in India' and user data is encrypted and stored locally, not in China.
Business model and strategy
Atomberg’s business strategy is built on three pillars:
Technology-led innovation,
Omnichannel presence, and
A premium positioning
From the start, Atomberg has focused on solving real customer problems through R&D and engineering, spending about 7% of its topline on innovation—much higher than traditional players like Havells or Bajaj. Akin to Dyson which spends 15-20% on R&D. This tech-first approach has helped them launch standout products like BLDC fans, and more recently, mixer grinders and smart locks.
The company's initial go-to-market strategy targeted the Business-to-Business (B2B) segment - targeting those with abundant fan usage like colleges, hospitals. They secured orders from big names like Tata Group, Infosys, Reliance, Indian Railways, IITs, schools, and hospitals
The company continues to serve B2B clients through direct sales channels. A particularly good product-market fit came in 2015 with the ceramics industry in Gujarat’s Saurashtra region, where fans are used in large quantities to dry ceramic pots. Atomberg saturated this niche, selling around 4,000 fans there that year.
However, the founders soon realized that the B2B market represented only about 10% of the total fan market in India, limiting growth potential and making margin building difficult. This led them to build for the larger Business-to-Consumer (B2C) market, beginning with online sales in 2016 when Amazon/Flipkart were still young, gaining traction and it offered a level playing field to all companies including incumbents.
Atomberg learnt that the B2C customer is value sensitive, not price sensitive. Atomberg fans retailed at prices which were 1.5 times the conventional fan prices. And surprisingly, the customer was not buying the fan for its efficiency. They were buying it for its cute LED light at the base of the fan. Or buying it for the remote which made it possible for him or her to switch on the fan even after they had got into bed.
Atomberg fans started getting great reviews. This was a big validation for the product. Right in the first year on Amazon, Atomberg became the number 1 seller of fans. Their own D2C website, though a small part of revenue, about 5%, has been key for direct customer engagement and feedback.
Finally, they expanded into offline retail in 2018. Atomberg started with the Pune-Mumbai retailers, and is now present in 30,000 counters across the country. It is a market leader already in South India and 70%+ of its revenue is from offline routes. Atomberg relies on a network of distributors to manage its reach within the general trade channel across various regions. This extensive network is vital for reaching consumers who prefer to see and purchase products in person and is essential for achieving mass-market penetration and challenging incumbents.
This is a post by Arindam on the strategy for General and Modern Trade, which is a masterclass. Sharing some pointers here:
Unless you are operating at an entry level price point (1000 Rs for a Fan, 10 Rs for a beverage, 5 Rs for chips etc) GT or MT is not a demand creation channel. It is a channel where you capture demand. For most startups, there is no demand to capture and hence this fails
The odds of defeating a legacy brand in premium price points in GT/MT is 10x more difficult than doing it in E-Com. Legacy brands have decades of relationship and outlets are tied up through different trade schemes. And they have hero SKUs which makes the outlets depend on them for their day to day survival.
There is no need to optimize on margins on day 1. Traders do not care about absolute margins. They care about Earns( Margins)*Turns ( Stock Rotation). As your stock movement increases and rotations improve, margins get corrected. But without stock rotation, very difficult to sustain channel
Your distributor is not responsible for sales numbers alone. Distributor solves 3 things- supply, credit and placement in stores. They can never influence sellout from stores. If you keep pushing primarily to the distributor, he will quit. Once 2-3 distributor churn happens quickly, the market will get spoilt forever
To support its sales channels and enhance customer experience, Atomberg has established a significant service infrastructure. This includes over 400 service centers across India and partnerships with service providers. The company views after-sales service as a critical component of its marketing and brand promise. Free installation and service are offered in select cities. Despite this emphasis, some consumer feedback points to challenges with service responsiveness or repair costs, indicating an area requiring ongoing attention.
Key Financials
Financially, Atomberg has demonstrated impressive revenue growth, reaching INR 848 crore in FY24 (up 31.5% YoY) and reportedly crossing the INR 1,000 crore mark in FY25. However, this growth has been accompanied by significant net losses (reported variously as INR 138 crore or INR 202 crore in FY24), attributed largely to investments in R&D, brand building, and non-operational costs like ESOPs. Encouragingly, operational EBITDA losses have narrowed significantly, indicating improving core operational efficiency.
The company employs a hybrid omnichannel distribution strategy, with approximately 70% of sales generated through its extensive offline network of over 30,000 retail counters and distributors, and the remaining 30% via online channels, including major e-commerce platforms and its D2C website.
Future Roadmap
Atomberg’s future lies in expansion and innovation—both in product categories and new markets.
Category Expansion: Atomberg has already moved beyond fans, launching products like mixer grinders and smart locks. The company is gearing up to enter more kitchen appliances, with plans to introduce items such as chimneys, cooktops, juicers, and food processors in the next 12–15 months. Looking ahead, Atomberg is likely to disrupt other cooking appliances—think toasters, fryers, pressure cookers—and even cleaning devices like vacuum cleaners. Inspired by global leaders like Dyson, Atomberg may eventually expand into larger and personal care appliances, such as air purifiers, hair dryers, straighteners, and potentially even washing machines.
Geographic Expansion: While Atomberg’s core market is India, there’s clear ambition to expand across the Asian subcontinent and Southeast Asia. Entering Europe or the US would be a bigger challenge due to established competitors like Philips, Dyson, and KitchenAid, as well as tariff barriers—but it’s not off the table for the long term.
With a strong omnichannel presence and plans to grow its offline retail network further, Atomberg is focused on scaling up both reach and brand visibility, including major sponsorships and a growing ATL (above-the-line) marketing budget.
Great links for reference
