An engineering moat in a brand’s world: The Atomberg story

Atomberg recently turned ten. In its tenth year, it crossed a milestone that once felt improbable: ₹1,000 crore in annual revenue. For a consumer hardware company that started by reengineering ceiling fans, a traditional category long ruled by incumbents, the scale of that figure reflects a contrarian bet few believed would work. It’s now a reality, delivered through disciplined execution, long product cycles, and a deeply integrated operational model.

This isn’t your typical D2C, celebrity-backed blitz with overnight virality. Atomberg’s rise was shaped by methodical engineering and a founder team that held an unusually technical view of the mass market. In their early years, founders Manoj Meena and Shibam Das were less interested in brand storytelling than solving the wasted electricity and sluggish motors in the average Indian fan.

Why fans, and why now?

To understand Atomberg’s trajectory, you have to go back to the fundamentals. India sells over 40 million ceiling fans every year, but the category witnessed virtually no product innovation in decades. The market was large and fragmented at the bottom and heavily consolidated at the top. Margins were razor-thin largely because distributors had significant channel power. Most founders avoided it, and of course, fewer investors were willing to underwrite this category.

When Manoj and Shibam started in 2015, they spotted a mispricing. Using brushless DC motor (BLDC) tech, fans could consume far less electricity while delivering better performance and longevity. In a price-sensitive country, even a marginally higher upfront price could be justified by a lower lifetime cost. So then the remaining challenge was to build a reliable motor and construct a GTM engine that could deliver not just reach, but real value to end consumers, and where retailers could explain it and customers could feel it in their power bills!

Scaling under the radar

For the first few years though, Atomberg wasn’t a breakout. The unit economics was sound but it lacked the distribution muscle to scale premium fans beyond metros. Tier 2 and tier 3 cities remained reliant on offline retail and digital CACs didn’t justify themselves.

In late 2021, we led Atomberg’s $20M funding round. Soon after, the company took a big operational swing by transitioning from its small-scale factory in Mumbai to a modern, state-of-the-art facility in Pune that allowed for vertical integration.

We first visited Atomberg’s setup in 2019. The facility was modest but unusually well-structured. Even as a garage-stage startup, its processes were cleaner than many of the incumbent factory floors we saw at the time. It was clear the team had a deep respect for operational precision.

That instinct matured into a full-blown operational scale with the new Pune facility. Over time, it brought more processes in-house to tighten this control. For instance, it moved its paint shop operations from third-party vendors to this new facility, recognising that surface finish and paint quality often form a customer’s first impression of a product. This kind of vertical integration gave Atomberg quality control, tighter margins, faster product iteration cycles, and eventually, the margin profile needed to push into adjacent categories. 

An alternative playbook for consumer durables

Most consumer brands in India of the last decade have grown on the back of fast GTM, digital burn, and repeat purchase logic. Unlike those, Atomberg had to build without any of that since fans aren’t replaced every six months, and CACs are high. So it was forced to think in years, not months. The only way to grow was to add products and go deeper into offline distribution.

The company put engineering first so that products earned trust by performing better through lower energy draw, stronger airflow, and longer life. It treated service as a core part of the brand by investing in installation quality, warranty coverage, and responsive after-sales support that created advocacy money cannot buy.

Brand building happened through engineering credibility and post-sale service, not just top-of-funnel advertising. Atomberg’s marketing remained tightly focused on performance media and in-store visibility, including branded shopfronts, OOH and city bus ads. Sure, this model is slower but it is also harder to dislodge.

Expanding the stack

What started with fans has now extended into mixer grinders and smart locks, and most recently, the water purifier and cold press juicer. Each new vertical may seem unrelated at first glance, but the common thread is engineering-led differentiation. Each new SKU targets either a performance gap or an energy inefficiency, or both.

The mixer grinder, for instance, features the powerful BLDC motor that maintains performance under load while consuming less energy. The water purifier adjusts filtration levels based on input water quality, reducing waste and extending filter life. The cold-press juicer is built for long runtimes and easier maintenance. While not any novelty features, they are hard-engineered solutions to everyday consumer frictions built with a level of precision more typical of B2B manufacturing than consumer appliances.

What the GTM got right

Atomberg committed early to an offline-first go-to-market approach. In a high-ticket, low-frequency category, consumers want to see and touch products, to ask questions, and to be reassured by a knowledgeable retailer. The company invested in counter presence, demonstration units, and a service network that backed up the promise. Over time, that effort has compounded into retailer advocacy that drives demonstrations, satisfied owners who spread the word, and more shelf space that, in turn, improves throughput at the point of sale.

‍After ₹1,000 crore

Crossing the ₹1,000 crore mark is symbolic, but the opportunity ahead is still wide open. The TAM across Atomberg’s current product lines is well north of ₹50,000 crore annually in India alone! Most incumbents still sell legacy SKUs with little regard for tech, creating room for Atomberg to reshape consumer expectations around energy performance and design.

Its next phase will likely see deepening of its R&D in smart home integration and product longevity. In fact, it has already moved the market forward with features like remote controls, usage tracking, and modular parts that support repair in what were once stagnant product lines! It has the runway and precision to keep doing so. 

This isn’t a brand play or a GTM story. Atomberg’s moat is the one thing that’s hardest to replicate- an engineering obsession built into the bones of the company.