This Indian TV Brand Is Replacing Sonys And LGs In People's Homes — Here’s How Lumio Did It

When Sudeep Sahu, Head of Product, Lumio tells me that they were, in fact, part of the problem they are now trying to solve, he does not flinch. "We keep saying traffic is the problem, traffic is a problem in our day-to-day life, without realising we are the traffic," he says at a product briefing for the brand's second-generation TVs. It is a disarmingly honest thing to say for the co-founder of a company that has, in just about a year, managed to get people to ditch their LG OLEDs and Sony Bravias for a TV brand most of India has never heard of.

Lumio is built by Circuit House Technologies, a Bangalore-based startup founded in 2024 by Raghu Reddy, Kailash Sankaranarayanan, and Sudeep Sahu — veterans with nearly two decades of collective experience across consumer electronics, e-commerce, and product development at some of India's biggest tech companies. But when they sat down in late 2023 to figure out what to build, they did not want to do a remix. "We knew we cannot just run the same products or the same concepts and go to the market," Sudeep says. "Our core vision was to build a new home entertainment brand out of India which does not focus entirely on entry level — differentiated products, differentiated experience, with the goal that if somebody uses our product, it should spark joy."

The validation came from talking to real users. "We went and spoke to users, some of them were existing TV owners. Everybody kept saying — after 2 months, after 3 months, after 6 months, everything starts seeming very slow." And this was not a brand-specific problem. "Even if you go and look at Samsung or LG, when you click the Netflix button, the first thing you see is the logo and then a circle below it. We wanted that to be instant. NVIDIA Shield was our northern star."

Raising Rs 36 Crore Before Selling A Single TV

Building a fast TV is one thing. Convincing investors to back you in a market where Oppo, Realme, Philips, and Amazon Basics had already tried and quit is another. "It was very difficult to raise money in a category which is already filled with enough players," Sudeep says. "Why do you need another player — that has been asked." But they found believers in Stellaris Venture Partners and 3one4 Capital, who backed the team's vision with Rs 36 crore before a single TV left the factory. "They believed in our dream of building a new brand with differentiated product and experience which solves actual real world pain points."

The Factory Floor Nobody Expected

The TVs were the relatively straightforward part — Lumio manufactures with Dixon Technologies, and the team had deep existing relationships there. The real challenge came with projectors. "When we started, there were no factories manufacturing projectors in India," Sudeep says. They partnered with a factory in Daman, but the workers had been making basic electronics like phone chargers. "We had to upskill their entire group of people to develop this as a process. We went back and forth for almost three months."

The initial plan of launching TVs and projectors together had to be scrapped. But Sudeep frames it with pride. "Imagine the upskill of the labourers in the factory, from making phone chargers to building projectors. There is a great honour in that." The result is the Lumio Arc series, now the number one Google TV projector brand in India. They even pushed an Android 11 to Android 14 update on the projectors, something essentially unheard of in the category. And in a move nobody saw coming, Lumio recently started selling projectors through Swiggy Instamart. "We saw a lot of people ordering right before IPL," he says.

60 Percent Of Buyers Are Coming From LG, Samsung, And Sony

The numbers tell a compelling story — $1 million GMV within two months of launch, 12x sales spike on Prime Day, Amazon's "Breakthrough TV Brand of the Year" within four months, and expansion from Amazon-exclusive to Flipkart by January 2026.

But the number that surprised me most: roughly 60 percent of Lumio buyers are switching from established brands. "We have gone to people's homes and they have an LG TV and we see them buying our TV," Sudeep says. "Almost 60 percent of the people from LG, Samsung, Sony and Xiaomi are buying our TVs. The differentiated factor is performance."

One customer near Pune owns an LG OLED but bought two Vision 9 units and a Vision 7 for different rooms. "He has spent lakhs and lakhs of rupees and he says he prefers watching on our TV. I mean, that is something." When I ask what is driving this, Sudeep is clear: "75 percent of the people who are buying our TV, it is because of speed. Back in the day, performance was not even in the top 10 list of purchase factors. Now they cannot go back."

The Uncomfortable Reviews

I bring up the other side, Amazon reviews about fragile screens, slow after-sales response, customers feeling abandoned after spending Rs 55,000 on a brand they took a chance on. Sudeep does not dodge it.

"Yes, nothing is 100 percent. Initial few days, yes, there is a learning curve." But the groundwork was laid early with around 350 service centres covering 20,000-plus pin codes, installation handled directly by Lumio, not the e-commerce platform. "Almost 80 percent of orders get installed within 24 hours. This is across India, not concentrated in tier one or tier two."

What is interesting is how they handle edge cases. "Even if there is one or two escalations every day — people on Twitter or social media — we really sit and try to fix this with exception calls, which is not done by regular brands." In some cases, they have replaced TVs without debate. "We literally see if the person is unhappy, we do not even ask questions. Sometimes the customer asks for replacement and we say, we can do the refund if you want. It is okay."

The advantage of being a 40-person company, he says, is agility. "If an SOP is not working, we will go and modify it. Because the SOPs are determined by us."

Why They Finally Added Gaming And A 65-Inch Model

When Lumio launched, two omissions drew attention — no 65-inch variant and no variable refresh rate. Sudeep had been upfront about this being a data-driven choice, but I pushed him on whether it handed the enthusiast buyer to TCL and Hisense.

"We were skeptical, to be very frank," he admits. "We were taken very aback and surprised — our 55-inch Vision 9, when we launched at Rs 60,000, people from day one from tier 2 and tier 3 cities were buying it." The confidence to go bigger came from consumers, not strategy decks. The 2026 lineup now includes a 65-inch model.

As for gaming: "We heard loud and clear — gaming is a need." The new TVs pack full HDMI 2.1 bandwidth, VRR, and ALLM. When I point out that VRR has become table stakes, he smiles. "Honestly, we decided not to include it last year. It was a choice. But we are trying to set the new standard."

Will You See A Lumio Next To A Bravia In Croma?

Instead of rushing into traditional retail, Lumio partnered with Urban Ladder to place demo units across 56 cities. "You walk into an Urban Ladder store, you are given the remote. YouTube Premium locked in, Netflix locked in. You experience the TV in an environment which is actually very close to a home — not a wall of LEDs where you do not get the true experience." He says other brands have started copying the idea.

As for Croma and Reliance Digital — "a little too early." The focus stays on online for now. But with Flipkart live, a D2C store running for projectors, and quick commerce experiments with Swiggy, the distribution playbook is expanding faster than planned.

For a brand that did not exist 18 months ago, the trajectory is remarkable. But what makes Lumio genuinely interesting is not just the growth — it is the honesty. When your co-founder openly says "we are the traffic," it tells you something about the company's culture. Whether that translates into lasting trust with consumers spending Rs 60,000-plus on a name they are just learning will define Lumio's next chapter. But if 60 percent of your buyers are walking away from Sony, Samsung, and LG to take a chance on you, something is clearly working.