A small act of responsiveness from boAt cofounder and CMO Aman Gupta has struck a chord online after a young customer, Shristi Singhal, shared that he personally answered her WhatsApp message about an issue with the boAt app and even had his personal assistant follow up the next day.
According to Singhal’s LinkedIn post, a rough day ended with her trying to order electronics for her family via the boAt Lifestyle app. When she hit a snag, she reached out directly to Gupta, skipping formalities and opening with a casual “yaar” fully expecting nothing. Instead, he replied.
The quick acknowledgment, she wrote, “made my entire night.” The next day, she received a call from his personal assistant to check what went wrong, reinforcing that the concern hadn’t just been noticed—it was being tracked.
Gupta then responded publicly under her post with a line that distilled boAt’s community-first positioning into one sentence:
“You are not just any random customer… you are a boAtHead. You are part of the reason we are what we are today. 🙏🙏”
Singhal also attached a screenshot of the WhatsApp exchange to her post, which sparked a thread of appreciation for founder-led customer care. While many consumer-tech brands rely on standard support channels, this episode showcases a distinctively founder-in-the-loop approach: brief, human, and immediate.
Why this resonated?
- Founder visibility matters: Customers don’t expect a top executive to be in their inbox, so when it happens, it signals accountability and pride of ownership.
- Tone sets the culture: Opening with “yaar” and receiving a warm reply underlines a brand voice that’s informal yet respectful, aligned with boAt’s youth-centric identity.
- Follow-through > first reply: The PA’s next-day call suggests the intent wasn’t just to soothe a moment but to resolve a problem end-to-end.
The bigger picture
India’s D2C ecosystem has conditioned shoppers to expect speed, clarity, and a human touch. In that context, Gupta’s reply isn’t just a courtesy; it’s a brand choice. For boAt, whose community calls itself “boAtheads”, that choice doubles as retention strategy: people remember the time a founder showed up.
What it says about customer playbooks
- Direct channels still work: For sticky issues, a direct, time-boxed founder escalation can be more effective than pushing customers through repetitive loops.
- Trust compounds: A single, empathetic response can convert frustration into advocacy, especially when it’s paired with a concrete follow-up.
- Make it systematic: Moments like these are most valuable when they feed structured fixes: app telemetry checks, CX dashboards, and root-cause analysis.
Aman Gupta And His Small But Sweet Gesture
A WhatsApp reply won’t fix an app bug by itself. But it can change the energy of a bad day and turn a potential detractor into a storyteller. In Singhal’s words, sometimes “these small things really stay with you.” Gupta’s public comment distilled it further: a reminder that, to boAt, “random customers” have a name, their community.
Also Read: Aman Gupta: Gen Z’s ‘Why Boss’ Is Courage, Not Disrespect
