Nothing co-founder and India President, Akis Evangelidis, met us and chatted all things strategy
Akis Evangelidis
Will Nothing always be an ‘enthusiast’ brand?
That’s a good question. I’ve been thinking about it myself a lot, you know. I think it’s like the inflection point, right, for any brand which is a brand very close to the early adopter community towards their product.
And to be honest, there can be a strategy crafted around it, but for us, what has made this kind of unique in a way, I think it’s, we have very strong foundations when it comes from a brand standpoint – as a consumer tech brand. You know, everything we’ve been doing from the beginning has been very authentic to ourselves.
We weren’t so strategic, and we’ve been very truthful to ourselves and I think that has allowed for a level of consistency across the board. So to answer your question, I feel like why people buy into the brand or why, you know, 2,000 people were there at the store is because those foundations have been there since the beginning. The users are now started expressing themselves in a different way.
But brand enthusiasts are hard to please. How are you planning to keep them happy in the next few years?
I think lots of brands grow far from the user. But we’ve actually vetted this in a bit. One of things we do, ever since we started this company, 10 per cent of our Series A, we allocated to the general public.
So, people could invest as little as USD 50 and you would actually get merch that was even worth more than $50. So we didn’t do that for the money. It was more for like, you know, our early fans to have almost a bit of skin in the game.
Every year, someone also gets selected to sit in our board meetings. It’s called the Community Board Observer.
They funnel any sort of feedback they have about the brand, about the product. So his or her role is to kind of consolidate everything and ensure that it fits straight into the sort of decision making of the company. And on top of this, of course, we engage with our community in many ways. Another one is on product. We have a big army now of beta testers with a big part in India as well.
But talking about the CMF — you moved the headquarters to India. What’s the long-term vision for that kind of thing?
I think our journey has gone hand-in-hand with India’s journey, and I think the growth here has been exponential. What’s happening here now is what happened in China 10 years ago. It has a very strong domestic market, a very big young audience.
And your price point is good that younger people can buy it.
Exactly. Especially the young audience, who are looking more into buying brands with aspiration, something that stands for self-expression, something that stands out. So naturally, it’s been sort of perfect timing, and market fit in a way.
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