Three years ago, when @RaghuReddy505 and I said we were building a home entertainment brand starting with TVs, we were met with a fair share of skepticism. Who needs another TV brand? Who cares about speed on a TV? Why won’t the big guys just do what you’re building? We had our answers. Very few believed them. @rchowdhri did, and backed us on day one. Today @LumioIN Vision and Arc are among the top sellers in their categories, and Aura 5 takes the same approach into home audio. Enjoyed sitting down with him on Interstellar to talk about how we actually build: obsess over customer pain points, build products with passion and build alongside a community that deeply cares about tech. Worth a listen.

Why we're launching bookshelf speakers My earliest memory of good music was a Pioneer cassette player with two massive wooden speakers we had at home in the 90s. I wore out more cassettes on that setup than I'd like to admit. Those were the days when you could sit with the music, no phone in hand, and just chill. Music has had an incredible run. Cassettes gave way to MP3s. MP3s gave way to streaming. Streaming became lossless. You now have studio-quality sound on your phone. Music has never sounded better. And what about how we listen to music at home? The wooden stereo pair gave way to the big double deck music system, with PMPO claims that could deafen the neighbourhood. Then came the 5.1 home theatre systems, with enough wires to circle the earth. And now, Soundbars. Sleek, minimal, simple. But were they really a step up? Speaking from experience: not really. My 5.1 set has survived two house moves. But it's still in the box. The weekend where I was supposed to set it up never came. My soundbar barely gets switched on. Dialogue is muffled, so I turn it up. Then an explosion hits, and so does the death stare from my wife. Volume down. Switch off. Repeat. Here's the strange part. Ten steps from my living room is my home studio, where I play guitar and make beats as a hobby. Nothing fancy, just a pair of bookshelf speakers on my desk. But on those, a track opens up. I can hear where the vocal sits, the singer's breath before a line, the pick hitting the string, the reverb trailing off into the room. The kind of detail I could never catch on the soundbar in my living room. The difference is physics. Stereo needs two speakers, spaced apart. Cram everything into one bar and you get the volume, but not the feeling. Thankfully, at @LumioIN we have our fair share of serious audiophiles @laurelsudeep, @kdcloudy, @sarthak9394 and @Abhish3k89 who all felt the same way. So when we decided to get into audio, there wasn't much debate. It had to be Hi-Fi bookshelf speakers. There was just one catch. For most people, bookshelf speakers in the living room meant decision fatigue and endless rabbit holes. Which amp? Which DAC? Which cables? Three YouTube videos later, we're off checking out "best soundbars under 30k". So the real job wasn't just great sound. It was great sound that's as easy to set up as a soundbar. That's @LumioIN Aura 5. Two wooden speakers. Amp and DAC built in. Connect, plug in, play. No receiver, no rabbit holes. Put them by your TV, on your desk, or just pair your phone. Movie night gets dialogue you can actually follow, with a Cinema mode that brings voices forward. Your playlists get room to breathe, with the vocals in front of you and the instruments spread across the soundstage. And all that lossless music you've been streaming finally gets speakers that can keep up. As our marketing team put it, pun intended : Hi-Fi Sound. Bar None. Aura 5 lands on Amazon India for the Great Indian Festival at ₹24,999, with an early bird price of ₹19,999 Plus bank offers on Amazon. lumio.co.in/aura