On June 1, 1945, Fritz Sennheiser, a German inventor and entrepreneur, founded the audio equipment manufacturing company that bears his name and went on to become a global brand. Today, Sennheiser has three business units: Pro Audio, Business Communication and Neumann.Berlin.
In a conversation with Storyboard18, Andreas Sennheiser, the company’s chief executive officer, said, “The first thing is you have to hit a ‘need’. To not get complacent and to not be happy with what we’ve achieved, we have to keep listening to the customer and at the same time have a creative dissatisfaction with the status quo. So, the achievements of the past should always be seen as just the new standard. From there, we can iterate again.”
Edited excerpts:
Tell us more about Sennheiser’s India story.
We started bringing good audio to India in 2007. At the time, it was really hard to understand where the general public was with audio consumption. We found out that listening to music via headphones wasn’t a known principle.
So, over the last 16 years, I think we’ve done quite well in developing the taste of enjoying music on the consumer side. For two years, we focused on the pro business only, along with business communication, and then our Neumann products also.
Particularly, in the last one-and-a-half years after the pandemic, we’ve seen very strong growth. On the live part, everyone wants to enjoy music, festivals, weddings and all kinds of corporate events. But on the business communication side, government, corporate and also higher education facilities are gearing up significantly for hybrid meetings, for remote lectures and also for a digital government.
Where do you see India in Sennheiser’s growth map?
In the last two years, India has had one of the highest growth levels, with more than 50 percent annual growth.
As far as the general business globally is concerned, we could supply all our customers with products even during the pandemic. So, we were never really out of products.
From a product lens, what’s the focus?
We have several focuses. There’s a general common focus that more and more of the technology that we’re using—it is highly advanced—is hidden behind very simple user interfaces.
So, we want to make it as simple as possible, come up with seamless integration, plug and play with our installed business like ceiling microphones… This is so that an integrator, a consultant or the end user really doesn’t need to deal a lot with technology but actually can focus on the experience.
Many global CEOs are surprised by the way Indian consumers have evolved over the last few years. From a price-conscious market, we now are a value-conscious market. So, what are your observations and what is unique about Indian consumers?
Well, you just gave the right keywords.
It has evolved from a price sensitive market of buying at the lowest possible level to now buying the highest possible value. So, with that, we are in an excellent position because we love competition. We love the direct comparison of our products with competitive products because usually this is when we win.
That’s why value-based buying decisions are very much in our favour, because we provide superior audio quality.
Globally, what are the trends in the audio space and do you see the adoption of those trends in India anytime soon?
One of the big trends is that high–quality audio is being more and more appreciated. This is particularly when it comes to immersive audio and spatial audio. In the studios, we have more and more Atmos installations with our Neumann speakers. Also, on the playback side, we see a lot of venues now having full arrays of speakers for an immersive experience.
So, the whole appreciation for good audio has significantly increased over the last few years. At the same time, there’s also a strong trend of simplification of workflows. So, we try to focus on making the lives of our end users as simple as possible, particularly because there’s also cost pressure on production, music production, news gathering etc. We want to give them the gear that they can operate with the least possible amount of people.
What is the brand perception of Sennheiser?
Sennheiser has a brand reputation of being extremely reliable, creating remarkable audio experience and being a highly innovative brand.
The topmost factor is always reliability. In a meeting room, you don’t want to spend 20 minutes getting the system to work. An artist in front of 50,000 people, the only thing he or she can hold is a microphone, and that should not fail.
In terms of marketing, what are the big plans for India and what are the investments like?
Our main investment is in people and education. So, it’s people on our end and education on the customer side.
We see that the more there are highly talented technicians, audio engineers and people who know the difference between an okay system and a great system.
During the pandemic, we produced 200 tutorial videos: how to use our microphones, how to set up gear in general, and how to build a studio. A lot of things to just help the audio community do a better job.
In India, startups have been weaving a very different story in the last few years. As a family-owned company and one of the oldest startups in the audio space, do tell us what it takes to make a successful business and your advice for startups here.
The first thing is you have to hit a ‘need’. This is not only true in a startup, but also when a company like ours gets older. Now, we’re closer to the 80th year of our existence. To not get complacent and to not be happy with what we’ve achieved, we have to keep listening to the customer and at the same time have a creative dissatisfaction with the status quo.
So, the achievements of the past should always be seen as just the new standard. From there, we can iterate again.
There are a bunch of profitable startups in the audio space here in India. What impresses you about them and are there any lessons that you can pick from them?
When startups have a platform economy in mind and then scale that up, they can very quickly cover a very broad demand, be it with fintech platforms or be it any other integration.
That is an approach that I find highly attractive because it’s not product and gear oriented, but really platform oriented. And this is also a strategy that we’re adopting more and more. We are not just selling gear to our customers, but we actually provide the control platform with it to make it as easy as possible.
That has been a strategy for a couple of years—to have a lot of allies in the industry in order to allow a seamless integration for the end user. So, the platform is really the main focus. And, what we’re selling in terms of gear is just an endpoint to the whole platform.
Has the target audience of Sennheiser evolved over time?
Yes and no. Our target audience grows with us.
While there was an entry target audience a decade back that has now matured in age and in income, they are now being lifted to the next level.
I had a chance to meet with music composer duo Salim-Sulaiman. We had a chat about technology particularly, and they stressed upon how they started with simple gear and then moved to higher-grade gear.