boAt has expanded Shrey Walia’s responsibilities by appointing him as Business Head – New Business Verticals, alongside his existing role as Business Head – Wearables and Accessories.
From Global Martech Alliance’s lens—where we focus on how brands build scalable growth engines—this is the kind of leadership move that often signals a serious shift from “category scaling” to “portfolio building,” with a sharper eye on repeatable go-to-market systems.
Walia has been with boAt for over two years and has been involved in building and scaling the company’s wearables and charging solutions businesses.
Now, his expanded mandate is to identify and develop new and emerging business opportunities, and to lead initiatives that create scalable business models aligned with boAt’s long-term growth strategy and evolving consumer needs.
The company’s stated intent is clear: boAt is exploring additional business verticals while continuing to push its core categories, rather than treating “new bets” as side projects.
The headline change is straightforward: boAt has formally expanded Shrey Walia’s scope beyond wearables and accessories by adding “new business verticals” to his remit.
This is a structural choice, not just a title update, because it places exploration, validation, and scaling of new lines of business under a leader already accountable for existing revenue engines.
From an operating standpoint, that combination matters. When companies separate “innovation” teams too far from the core business, pilots can look exciting but struggle to scale (distribution realities, supply chain constraints, service overhead, and marketing economics hit later). By assigning new verticals to a leader already running established categories, boAt increases the odds that any new line is designed for scale from day one—pricing, channels, merchandising, customer support, and lifecycle marketing included.
boAt’s CEO, Gaurav Nayyar, highlighted Walia’s execution bias, consumer understanding, and business acumen, and framed new growth engines as critical as the brand evolves beyond its core categories.
Walia, in turn, said he’s excited to build new lines of business that can scale sustainably and create long-term value—language that suggests the company is prioritising durable unit economics and repeatable demand creation, not just “launch buzz.”
Wearables and personal tech accessories are no longer “new” categories—competition is deep, pricing pressure is real, and product cycles are fast. Even when a brand has strong distribution and cultural relevance, it eventually hits the point where incremental growth in the same category becomes harder and more expensive.
That’s typically when companies start doing three things at once:
boAt’s move fits that pattern, especially because the mandate explicitly talks about “new and emerging opportunities” and “scalable business models” aligned to long-term strategy.
In practical terms, this is how brands reduce dependence on a single category’s volatility while also creating more moments to engage consumers across the year (and across life contexts).
From the marketing side, portfolio expansion changes the game in a few important ways:
That last point is where martech maturity becomes a growth unlock. Global Martech Alliance exists to help teams choose the right marketing tools through comparisons, reviews, and practical resources—because the tool stack increasingly decides whether growth is repeatable or chaotic.
When a business shifts from a single category to multiple verticals, it’s not just “more campaigns”; it’s more complexity that must be managed with better systems.
boAt hasn’t publicly listed which verticals are next in this announcement, so it’s important not to over-speculate.
But we can map what “new verticals” often mean for a consumer electronics brand that already understands youth demand, fast product iteration, and omnichannel distribution—without claiming any specific launches.
Here are the most common “adjacent vertical” directions brands in boAt’s position evaluate, and what each would require to work at scale:
The key is that “new business verticals” must still fit the brand’s consumer promise. If the brand stands for style-led, accessible tech, then each new vertical has to feel coherent—otherwise marketing spend increases just to explain “why us?”
In many cases, the biggest risk in portfolio expansion isn’t product development—it’s brand sprawl. The leadership mandate explicitly mentions alignment with evolving consumer needs and boAt’s long-term growth strategy, which suggests the company is aware of that risk and wants new bets to stay strategically consistent.
A “new vertical” becomes a growth engine only when three layers work together: product clarity, distribution readiness, and a measurement-driven marketing system.
New categories fail when the consumer can’t quickly understand the “job to be done.” For each new line, the brand needs a simple promise that can be expressed in:
This is where strong category leadership matters. Walia’s background in scaling wearables and accessories suggests familiarity with the realities of high-volume categories—where differentiation must be communicated quickly and repeatedly.
Distribution is not just “where it’s listed.” It’s whether the product can win the shelf—digital or physical—through:
If boAt is exploring new verticals “alongside its core categories,” it suggests a dual-track approach: scale the existing portfolio while incubating and validating new bets—without starving either side of attention.
This is where the Global Martech Alliance perspective is most relevant. Our mission is to simplify how teams discover, evaluate, and adopt tools so they can make faster, more confident decisions with comparisons, reviews, and practical resources.
When a brand expands into new verticals, the marketing team’s tool stack becomes central to speed and efficiency: attribution discipline, creative testing velocity, CRM segmentation, and customer feedback loops can’t remain ad-hoc.
A practical stack-and-process approach for multi-vertical growth usually includes:
None of this needs to be “big brand bureaucracy.” It needs to be lightweight but consistent—so every new vertical doesn’t reinvent the wheel.
First, this appointment reinforces a simple scaling truth: growth engines are built, not found. boAt is explicitly talking about new opportunities, scalable models, and long-term strategy alignment—language that fits companies thinking in years, not quarters.
Second, it highlights the value of execution-led leadership in consumer tech. boAt’s CEO emphasised Walia’s consumer understanding and bias for execution, which are the traits that keep new verticals grounded in what actually sells and scales.
Third, it’s a reminder that expansion requires a stronger operating system. If you want multiple verticals, you need:
That’s also why platforms like Global Martech Alliance exist: to help teams choose the right tools and resources to reduce evaluation friction and make smarter, faster decisions as complexity grows.