MC Interview | We have a big focus on design, since that makes us stand out in the sea of sameness: Manu Sharma, VP and GM, Nothing

The Phone (1) was a phenomenal success in India, and we sold over half a million units on Flipkart. Globally, the Phone (1) was lauded for its design and recognized as one of the top 200 innovations of 2022.

Importantly, I think, we established ourselves as a disruptive brand.

How close is the partnership with Teenage Engineering? How much say do they have over the design?

Teenage Engineering is a Swedish company that has manufactured some of the coolest audio products in the European market.

Jesper Kouthoofd, one of the founders of Teenage Engineering, became a founding partner for Nothing. Thomas Howard, Vice Head of Design for Teenage Engineering, leads the creative for Nothing on the design side of the products.

They are part of the founding team globally, and are a core part of the design team.

We have also expanded our design team and onboarded Adam Bates as our design director. Adam spent over 14 years at Dyson as a design lead, building the team that defined the design and user experience of its product portfolio.

It's essential for us to have a strong design team as it sets us apart as a brand.

So far, we have seen Nothing products move towards the more premium segment when it comes to pricing. Do you feel you are missing out on the entry-level market? Are there any plans for Nothing to enter that space?

I think, we are a start-up when it comes to competing in the market. Large brands you see these days have backing financially from their parent companies. We don't have that luxury.

We are currently building our team with resources from our investors. We are making an ecosystem of connected devices, and at the centre of that is the smartphone.

A good phone helps you build a large base of customers, which in turn, allows you to expose them to more of your devices. We wanted to be careful in the way we position our products.

In India, the 30k segment is where you see the most opportunity. People who have bought entry-level devices in the past now want to upgrade and not downgrade.

We also see ourselves as more of a premium player since we do not want to compromise on specifications or design.

It's a highly competitive market, and we will definitely be looking to expand our ecosystem to reach more people. As for specific plans, we don't have any information to share currently.

Since a connected ecosystem is one of the priorities for Nothing, will we see the company entering the smart home space? How about a Nothing-branded smart home hub?

For us, the focus right now is to strengthen our offerings in the areas we are already in, i.e., the smartphone and wireless earbuds space.

As I said, we will definitely evolve our ecosystem of devices in the future but we don't want to give information about projects that may or may not end up on store shelves.

How important is the software experience? What strides have you made in that space?

We have a big focus on design, since that makes us stand out in the sea of sameness.

At the same time, we believe that a smooth, responsive software experience helps differentiate us from other brands as well.

We want to offer customers a smooth, bloat-free software experience, and one of the ways we are doing that is by listening to our community. We want to co-develop our software experience with inputs from the community.

Nothing has also pushed out software updates regularly, and addressed a lot of issues from the feedback we gathered from the customers. We want people to be part of the team and forge a connection with the brand.

What were some pain points that Nothing encountered in 2022?

One thing that comes to mind is how popular the Phone (1) turned out to be. We were not expecting the demand that we received.

When we started initial sales, we were overwhelmed by the demand and ended up running at least eight flash sales for the phone on Flipkart because we kept running out of supply.

We worked diligently with our supply chain partners to fix that problem. Another challenge was establishing a good customer care experience in India.

Since the Phone (1) is unique in the way it's designed and uses a lot of materials that are away from the norm, we had to establish a new customer care ecosystem that accounted for that.

We also received great support from Flipkart to help us reach out to the deeper corners of India.

In our opinion, success is a journey and not a destination. It's a continuous process of self-improvement and taking brand awareness to the next level.

As a young player in the market, did you feel threatened by the competition?

I am not going to name anyone, but yes, given the pedigree of our founders and their experience, the competition did seem worried about us.

We had our fair share of talks with manufacturers who told us they couldn't do business with Nothing because a competing brand had asked them to choose.

We also had to dissolve partnerships where the demands were not aligned with our vision. Offline expansion in India proved challenging as well, with many partners saying they could not carry our products because competing brands threatened to pull out.

Overall, it was challenging for us to enter the market since it's so competitive, but we are here now, and that's all that matters.

What is Nothing's new year's resolution? What do you want to promise your community for 2023?

We are thankful to our users and the community for supporting us and their belief in us.

I would like to say that we would like to nurture this trust as we enter this new year by strengthening the bonds with our community. We will always listen to our customers and want to invite them on this long journey together.

As a consumer brand, we have pretty much torn down the rulebook and did what we felt was right. If I were to summarise our mission for 2023, it would be to be unafraid and continue being absolutely authentic.