No Store, No Ads, Rs 100 Crore In 13 Months — Inside The Rise Of Lumio

Lumio is barely 14 months old, and its co-founder is already telling me the first big milestone is behind them. "We've actually crossed 100 crores in gross merchandise value of products shipped to end customers in about 13 and a half months," says Raghu Reddy, Co-founder and CEO of Circuit House Technologies, the Bangalore-based startup behind the Lumio brand of smart TVs and projectors. No retail stores, no television advertising, no celebrity endorsement. Just products sold online to over 30,000 households across 5,000-plus pin codes in India.

It is a striking number for a brand that most consumers had not heard of a year ago. But Raghu, who spent nearly two decades in consumer electronics including a stint leading one of India's most successful TV businesses, is not in the mood to celebrate. "We keep telling ourselves that it's just a good number in the journey," he says. "The next big milestone would be to get to about 300 to 400 crores in a year, which will be close to a 3x bump." The company is already trending 3x bigger in May 2026 versus May 2025 — its first year-on-year comparison — driven by IPL, FIFA World Cup, and a clear consumer trend toward upgrading to bigger screens and better display technology. And the brand has clocked over 8 million searches in its first year, which tells you that word is getting around.

I sat down with Raghu and his co-founder Kailash Sankaranarayanan, who serves as COO, to understand the business playbook behind Lumio's growth, and what comes next.

The FMCG Guy In A Hardware Startup

If Raghu is the consumer electronics veteran who knows how TVs get built and sold in India, Kailash is the wildcard in this founding team. His career reads like a completely different industry — Nokia area sales, Hindustan Unilever brand management, TI Cycles head of marketing, and then a string of senior director roles at Flipkart across fashion, grocery, category marketing, and demand planning. Not a single day in consumer electronics before Lumio.

So why a home entertainment startup? "I've always been a gadget enthusiast," Kailash says, and then rattles off a history that makes his point. "I was a Kickstarter backer for Pebble, the first OG smartwatch. There was a smart glass called Vue that came in 2017 — I backed that too. When Raghu was at his earlier company, he used to get early preview products and I used to go get a sneak peek."

But the real answer is more strategic than fandom. "I've seen the Indian consumer evolve across multiple product categories. I understand their preferences, their need states, and how to take products to market for the Indian consumer. So if we are building something of our own, might as well work towards something I am passionate about, where my skill sets can be put to the fore."

When I push him on the one specific thing he brought from Flipkart that a pure electronics person would never have thought of, the answer is data rigour. "One DNA at Flipkart is looking at multiple different data points and trying to figure out what could work. We scraped almost 50,000-plus reviews to figure out that the key problem in modern TVs is that they get really, really slow." But scraping data was not enough. "Then we had to talk to consumers, figure out if it is an actual problem, a latent need or a prompted need. We figured it is a genuine problem, and then we doubled down on solving it."

He pauses and adds a line that captures Lumio's entire thesis: "If you look at the TV industry, no one is actually considering speed as a genuine problem. But when we talk to consumers and look at data, we know it is a latent problem."

Spending Less In A Year Than Legacy Brands Spend In A Month

The most jaw-dropping claim in our conversation comes when I ask about customer acquisition. How do you sell 30,000 TVs and projectors without a single TV ad or retail shelf?

Kailash is blunt. "In the first year, we would have spent less than what any legacy brand would spend in less than a month. We operate on very, very thin expenses." The strategy was deliberate — win tech enthusiasts first, let them validate the product claims, let the trust ripple outward. "The first set of consumers we wanted to win over was your tech enthusiasts, people who care about the finer details. When they saw that whatever we were telling was actually true, that built a huge amount of trust in the tech community."

He draws a parallel that is telling. "Some brands have done this in the past — OnePlus, or even Nothing — where you do things that are very different, appeal to that tech enthusiast community. They become your fans, your supporters. And also critics." That last word matters. The Vision 9 65-inch model, which sold out within a month of launch, was direct feedback from that same community. "The second wave is our next journey — how do we take what we have built and communicate that to mass audiences who would consider legacy brands."

Raghu puts the philosophy more simply. "If you find a large enough problem that no one is solving for, and create a product that addresses it as well as it can, demand will flow automatically. Our numbers are proof of that."

The Xiaomi Question

I bring up the elephant in the room. On the same day Lumio launched the Vision 9 2026, Xiaomi launched its Mini LED TV series in the exact same price segment. The company Raghu helped build is now competing directly in the space Lumio entered first.

He does not take the bait. "I won't ascribe so much meaning to it. It's just pure coincidence," he says. "We were looking to launch in February. But as with manufacturing in general, getting everything right takes that extra time. So it became an April launch." He does not dwell on it. He does not need to.

Online-First Is The Point, Not The Limitation

Is the absence of offline retail a constraint or a choice? "It is a conscious choice," Kailash says without hesitation. "We know how to build brand, trust, and demand online. We are consciously navigating that path." The Urban Ladder partnership, where Lumio TVs are displayed across 56 cities for hands-on experience, serves a different purpose than traditional retail. "Our customers are already informed. They know a lot about our products. A lot of times people have just said, I just want to see it once before buying. So it is more reinforcement of belief, not discovery."

Raghu adds context. "A lot of people asked us how you can sell premium products only online. But audiences have evolved. We've got 8 million-plus searches as a brand over the last one year. People now know us. If you make a great product and there are enough reviews out there, people will come. That's exactly how it panned out."

Project Neo And The 20-Minute Problem

This is where the Lumio vision starts sounding much bigger than televisions. The company's TLDR app already sees 50 percent of monthly active users returning weekly — an unusually strong engagement metric for an app that is not even the default home screen. But the real bet is Project Neo, an AI-powered bridge between your smartphone and your TV.

"The biggest frustration on a TV is input," Kailash says. "Typing on a remote is painfully hard. Voice doesn't work." So they built a system where you can send a WhatsApp message or an Instagram link to Lumio's handle, and the content shows up in your TV's Neo collection the next time you switch it on. "A co-worker says, hey, I found this new show. You make a mental note and then you forget. Now you can text it to our WhatsApp handle and it is there when you switch on the TV."

The problem it solves is instantly relatable. "People spend 20 to 40 minutes every evening deciding what to watch. You are seeing a wall of icons. It doesn't consider your mood, your context, whether you are watching alone or with family. With Neo, we are trying to bridge the gap between discovery through the day and consumption on the TV."

What Keeps Them Up At Night

When I ask what keeps them awake, Raghu's answer is not competition or brand awareness. It is component prices. "We are living in unprecedented times in terms of how component prices have gone up. Figuring out what kind of portfolio we need to build keeping in mind current realities — that takes up a lot of our time. Just getting ourselves ready for 2027."

It is a grounded, unsexy answer. And maybe that is what makes Lumio interesting. In a market full of brands chasing hype cycles and launch-day headlines, here is a 40-person startup that crossed Rs 100 crore by obsessing over RAM speed and Amazon reviews. No billboards, no brand ambassadors. Just a product thesis that turned out to be right, and two founders from completely different worlds — one from electronics, one from FMCG — who seem to know exactly what they do not know yet.