Most people know Aman Gupta as the high-energy Shark who built boAt into a household name. On the surface, his life looks like a series of wins, but his recent appearance on the Humans of Bombay podcast revealed a much darker and more difficult path. Before boAt became a titan of the Indian audio market, Aman was a man who had failed at five different businesses and was struggling to find his footing well into his 30s.
The shift from a five-time failure to a billionaire didn’t happen because of a business school tactic. It happened because of a perspective shift born out of a devastating personal loss. Aman revealed that losing his brother in a tragic accident on his brother’s own birthday fundamentally changed his relationship with fear and failure. Reflecting on that moment, Aman said: “I lost my brother on his birthday. When you see life and death like that, you realize that business is just a game. I stopped being scared of failing because I had already seen the worst.”
The angel investor at home
During those long years of trial and error, Aman was far from the wealthy mogul he is today. He was remarkably candid about the fact that his wife, Priya Dagar, was the one who kept their family afloat. While Aman was pouring his energy into ventures that weren’t yet paying off, Priya’s career provided the financial safety net they needed to survive.
Aman didn’t hold back on the ego hit he felt during this time, stating: “My wife was working, she was earning. I was the one who was failing… She was the one who was running the house. It’s not easy to go home at 35 and tell your wife that another idea didn’t work.” To save money and manage his exhaustion, Aman would head to the very first stop of a Delhi bus route just to guarantee a seat. He needed that seat not just for the commute, but to catch a few hours of sleep during his 18-hour workdays.
Turning ‘Nothing to Lose’ into a superpower
This combination of a rock-solid support system and a newfound “nothing to lose” attitude became Aman’s secret weapon. By the time he co-founded boAt in 2016, the fear that usually paralyzes entrepreneurs was gone. He was no longer trying to prove himself to the world; he was just playing the game. He explained that after his brother died, the usual pressures of running a business just didn’t seem as heavy anymore.
“After that I realised life is like that, that you never know when kuch ho jaye, yahaan pe bete hain, aur toh aajaaye, upar se kuch gire jaye, you never know, right? Flight chal rahi hain, you’re gone, right? (After that, I realised life is like that, that you never know when something might happen, you’re here, and then you come, and something might fall from above, you never know, right? The flight is taking off, you’re gone, right?),” The entrepreneur said.
When he eventually stepped back from his daily role at the company in late 2025 with a net worth of over Rs 700 crore, it was clear that his success came from years of quiet struggle that most people never saw.
His background proves that the self-assured person people see on screen is really someone who only found his way after he let go of the fear of making mistakes. He wrapped up this idea during the interview by telling the host, “Don’t take life too seriously. Work hard, but remember that the music can stop at any time.”