Startup Deep Dive : Mivi — grew to Rs 287 crore while most rivals still import their earbuds

Mivi’s earbuds are put together on a factory floor in Hyderabad that did not exist five years ago, on a production line staffed mostly by women, in a category where most Indian brands still ship finished units in from China. That single fact sits under a business that reported ₹287.0 crore ($29.9 million) in revenue for FY25, up 14.6% over the previous year, as per Inc42’s company filing summary sourced from Registrar of Companies (RoC) data.

The contradiction is that growth and profit have not moved together. Two years earlier, in FY23, the same company’s revenue jumped 45.6% year-on-year and its net margin still went negative, according to corporate-data platform Tofler.in, which draws on the same RoC filings. Mivi is now committing sums close to a third of its annual revenue to a new factory and an in-house voice-AI platform, a bet this piece works through section by section.

Quick facts

What Mivi sells, and to whom

Mivi designs, builds and sells audio electronics for price-conscious Indian buyers: true wireless earbuds, wired earphones, Bluetooth speakers, soundbars and, more recently, wearables, priced mostly between ₹800 and ₹3,500 (proudlymadeinindia.com). The company positions itself against boAt, Noise and Boult Audio — all of which lean on contract manufacturing abroad — by making the case that its products are engineered and assembled at its own Hyderabad facility rather than relabelled imports (proudlymadeinindia.com; mivi.in). The company says it has sold more than 10 million units to date (mivi.in “About” page).

The origin

Viswanadh Kandula and Midhula Devabhaktuni met as students at Florida State University in the United States. Before Mivi, Viswanadh worked at a firm that exported electronics from the US to India, and Midhula was a software engineer at Xerox (failurebeforesuccess.com; online.ifheindia.org). The couple moved back to India in 2015 with a simple observation: Indian buyers wanted good audio and accessories but were stuck choosing between costly international brands and unreliable cheap imports, with no credible domestic option in between (failurebeforesuccess.com; mivi.in). They began prototyping in May 2015 and put the first Mivi-branded products on sale in April 2016 (online.ifheindia.org). The company’s own account of its founding insight is unambiguous: “great audio should not cost a fortune” (mivi.in “About” page).

The struggle years

Mivi’s first full year of sales brought in roughly ₹8 crore, with about 70% of that coming through e-commerce marketplaces rather than physical retail (failurebeforesuccess.com) — a workable start, but one built entirely on imported product, which meant the company was exposed to every currency swing and shipping delay between its factories abroad and its customers at home. The company has said it has been self-funded rather than venture-backed through most of this period, ploughing profits back into the business instead of raising equity (mymobileindia.com interview).

The harder struggle was operational rather than financial. Mivi decided in 2018 to build its own manufacturing line in India, then a category with zero precedent — no other Indian audio brand assembled its own products domestically. The company’s co-founders have said plainly that “there wasn’t any trained skillset” available locally for this kind of assembly work, forcing Mivi to build a workforce, largely of first-time women factory workers, from nothing (payu.in blog). The original target to open the factory was March 2020; that date came and went as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted construction, imports of equipment, and hiring all at once (payu.in blog).

The turning point

The turning point is dated precisely: Mivi’s first fully Made-in-India product, the Roam 2 Bluetooth speaker, shipped in December 2020 — nine months later than planned, and in the middle of a pandemic that had just proven how fragile China-dependent supply chains could be (payu.in blog; proudlymadeinindia.com). On one side of that date sat a company that imported everything it sold; on the other, one manufacturing in-house with a factory that, within a couple of years, employed more than 700 people and was producing about one lakh (100,000) TWS earbud units a month at its Hyderabad site (payu.in blog; exhibit.tech). The pandemic-era shift toward true wireless earbuds helped too: India’s TWS shipments grew 74.7% year-on-year in 2021 to 20.3 million units, according to IDC data cited by Mivi’s co-founder in a trade interview, and Mivi rode that wave with a product line it now actually controlled end to end (mymobileindia.com interview).

The money behind it

Mivi’s funding shape is unusual for a consumer brand of its size: no marquee venture-capital round, and a single disclosed outside financing that was debt, not equity.

• Founding capital (2015–2020): self-funded by the co-founders; first-year revenue of about ₹8 crore reinvested into the business rather than distributed (failurebeforesuccess.com)
• N+1 Capital, venture debt, announced January 2022: an undisclosed amount described by the company as intended to strengthen in-house manufacturing capability and fund expansion into new product verticals (Exchange4media; BW Disrupt; Gadget Times, January 2022)
• RevX Capital: listed by Tracxn as a co-investor alongside N+1 Capital in the same round; not separately confirmed in the press coverage of the round reviewed for this piece
• Total raised / valuation: not disclosed in any source checked; because the round was debt rather than equity, it did not set a public valuation mark
• Capital committed since, from internal accruals and borrowings rather than fresh equity: about ₹200 crore into manufacturing capacity in 2024, and a planned ₹100 crore into an in-house AI voice platform for earbuds over 18 months from April 2025 (proudlymadeinindia.com; Devdiscourse, April 2025)

How Mivi makes money

The model is straightforward consumer hardware retail rather than anything with a take rate or subscription layer. Mivi designs and assembles audio products and mobile accessories, then sells them mostly online, historically leaning hard on e-commerce marketplaces before pushing to build an offline distribution network — the company said in 2022 it was targeting 15–20% of revenue from offline retail by the end of that year, up from a much smaller base (mymobileindia.com interview). The part people tend to get wrong, per the company’s own framing, is that “Made in India” for Mivi means design and final assembly in Hyderabad, not that every component is sourced domestically; audio chipsets and other electronics parts are still imported, with local value added through engineering, testing and assembly (mivi.in; payu.in). Margin sits, in principle, in that assembly and brand layer rather than in components — but the FY23 financials below show that margin has not consistently been positive.

The numbers

Public disclosure here is thin: Mivi does not publish results, and third-party trackers that cite its Registrar of Companies filings differ in how much they show for free. The figures below are the ones this piece could verify directly; unverifiable absolute rupee figures for FY22 and FY24 profit/loss have been left out rather than estimated.

One additional signal worth noting from the FY23 filing: borrowings rose 43.3% and total assets rose 76.1% that year even as profitability fell, consistent with a company funding a capital-heavy manufacturing build-out ahead of revenue catching up (Tofler.in, RoC filings).

Where the money comes from

• Product mix: true wireless earbuds are now the lead category — the company’s Hyderabad line was, as of the most recent factory reporting, running close to full-time on TWS output alone, around one lakh units a month (exhibit.tech)
• Channel split: heavily online in the early years (about 70% of sales through e-commerce in year one), with a stated push toward 15–20% offline revenue by the end of 2022 (failurebeforesuccess.com; mymobileindia.com interview)
• Manufacturing footprint: a single Hyderabad facility rather than a multi-city or contract-manufacturing spread that rivals use — the surprise, relative to most of the category, is that Mivi owns this step at all (payu.in; proudlymadeinindia.com)
• Workforce composition: the production line is reported at 80–85% women, an unusual staffing profile the company built from scratch after finding no existing trained workforce for electronics assembly in the region (payu.in; proudlymadeinindia.com)

The risks

• Profitability lagging growth: FY23 revenue grew 45.6% year-on-year even as the company posted a net loss and a -3.3% EBITDA margin, meaning scale alone has not yet produced consistent profit (Tofler.in, RoC filings)
• Leverage against an uncertain payoff: roughly ₹300 crore in combined manufacturing and AI-platform investment (₹200 crore in 2024 plus a planned ₹100 crore through 2026) is being committed against an FY25 revenue base of ₹287–300 crore, funded substantially through internal accruals and borrowings that were already up 43.3% in FY23 (proudlymadeinindia.com; Devdiscourse, April 2025; Tofler.in)
• Crowded, price-driven competition: Mivi competes directly with boAt and Noise, both far larger by scale, and Boult Audio in the same sub-₹3,500 price band, in a category where Chinese-linked budget entrants also compete hard on price (proudlymadeinindia.com)
• A stretch revenue target: the company has publicly targeted ₹1,000 crore in revenue by FY26, which would mean roughly tripling FY25 revenue in a single year — a target the company itself has framed as ambitious rather than a firm forecast (Devdiscourse, April 2025)

The takeaway

Mivi’s lesson is not that domestic manufacturing guarantees a better business — the FY23 numbers show it does not, on its own, guarantee a profitable one either. What it shows is that owning the hard, unglamorous middle step of a hardware business — the factory floor, the trained workforce, the testing line — can become the story that differentiates a brand in a category where almost everyone else is reselling the same imported components under different logos. Mivi bet on that differentiation years before it had the balance sheet to make it comfortable, and it is still working out whether growth or margin arrives first.

Frequently asked questions

What does Mivi make?

Mivi designs and sells audio electronics — true wireless earbuds, wired earphones, Bluetooth speakers and soundbars — along with mobile accessories such as cables and chargers, priced mostly between ₹800 and ₹3,500 (proudlymadeinindia.com; mivi.in).

Who founded Mivi, and when?

Viswanadh Kandula and Midhula Devabhaktuni, a couple who met at Florida State University, began prototyping in 2015 and launched the Mivi brand in April 2016; the operating company, Seminole Electronics Private Limited, was incorporated in December 2017 (online.ifheindia.org; Tofler.in).

Is Mivi profitable?

Not consistently, based on the filings available. Mivi posted a net loss in FY23 on a net margin of -2.1%, and profit or loss figures for FY24 and FY25 were not disclosed in the sources reviewed for this piece (Tofler.in, RoC filings).

Has Mivi raised venture capital funding?

Mivi has disclosed one outside financing: a venture debt round from N+1 Capital announced in January 2022, with Tracxn also listing RevX Capital as a co-investor. The amount was not disclosed, and the company has otherwise described itself as self-funded (Exchange4media; BW Disrupt; Tracxn).

Where does Mivi manufacture its products?

At its own facility in Hyderabad, Telangana, which began shipping fully Made-in-India product in December 2020 and was, as of the most recent reporting, producing about one lakh TWS earbud units a month (payu.in; exhibit.tech).

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• Mivi, “About” page, mivi.in — accessed September 2026
• IFHE Online MBA, “An evening with Ms Midhula Devabhaktuni”, online.ifheindia.org — accessed September 2026
• Failure Before Success, “Mivi”, failurebeforesuccess.com — accessed September 2026
• PayU Blog, “Story of the only audio electronics brand that manufactures in India, Mivi” (ForgeWithPayU), payu.in — accessed September 2026
• MyMobileIndia, “We are now living in the TWS era, says Mivi Co-founder”, mymobileindia.com — accessed September 2026
• Inc42, company profile for Mivi, inc42.com/company/mivi — accessed September 2026
• Tofler, company filing summary for Seminole Electronics Private Limited, tofler.in — accessed September 2026
• Tracxn, company profile for Mivi, tracxn.com — accessed September 2026
• Exchange4media, “Electronics brand Mivi raises fresh funding from N+1 Capital”, January 2022
• BW Disrupt, “Mivi raises an undisclosed amount from N+1 Capital”, January 2022
• Devdiscourse, “Mivi’s ambitious journey: aiming for a billion-dollar milestone by FY26”, April 2025
• Proudly Made In India, “Mivi”, proudlymadeinindia.com — accessed September 2026
• Exhibit.tech, “Inside Mivi’s Hyderabad factory: how TWS earbuds like the SuperPods come to life”, exhibit.tech — accessed September 2026
• Trading Economics, USD/INR exchange rate — 18 September 2026

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