How a Brand Called Nothing Became Everything in India

A London startup. A transparent phone. A CEO who became Carl Bhai. And a store opening that needed police intervention.

©Nothing

Carl Pei got bored of retirement in 10 days.

In October 2020, he quit OnePlus the brand he’d spent seven years building from a 50,000 unit idea into one of the most recognisable smartphone names on the planet. He planned to travel the world. Clear his head. Maybe take six months off.

He lasted a week and a half.

By the time he sat down with EQT Ventures in Stockholm, the pitch was simple: consumer electronics had stagnated. Every phone looked the same. Every brand spoke the same language. Nobody was doing anything interesting anymore.

He wanted to fix that. The company would be called Nothing.

Within three months, he’d raised $7 million from Casey Neistat, Tony Fadell (the man who invented the iPod), Kevin Lin (co-founder of Twitch), and Steve Huffman (CEO of Reddit). Not a single traditional VC in the room. Just creators, designers, and product people who believed the industry needed a jolt.

Nobody knew what Nothing was going to make. That was kind of the point.

The Transparent Bet

In July 2021, Nothing released its first product the Ear (1). Wireless earbuds. Transparent case. You could see every component inside.

It wasn’t just a design choice. It was a statement about what the brand believed in: show your work. Don’t hide behind a polished surface. Let people see how things are made.

The design partner was Teenage Engineering a Stockholm studio known for building synthesisers that looked like art installations. Their fingerprint was all over it: industrial, considered, a little eccentric.

Ear (1) sold out fast. Not because of advertising. Because tech YouTube couldn’t stop talking about it.

That was the playbook. Seed products with creators. Let the reviews and unboxings do the work. Build a community before you build a product line.

By the time Nothing announced Phone (1) in 2022, over 200,000 people had already joined the waitlist.

The Phone That Was Designed to Be Photographed

Phone (1) launched on July 12, 2022 invite-only, on Flipkart, with a ₹2,000 refundable deposit just to get in the queue.

The phone had a transparent back. Exposed internals. And a strip of 900 white LEDs arranged in geometric patterns across the rear panel — the Glyph Interface.

Five distinct zones. Each one programmable. Different contacts got different patterns. Charging showed a filling animation. Notifications pulsed in rhythms you could customise yourself. You could open the Glyph Composer app, build your own light-and-sound ringtone sequence, and share it on nothing.community.

This was a phone designed to be turned over. To be passed across a table. To be photographed from the back and posted.

Indian tech creators didn’t just review it they made content about making content with it. Unboxing reels. Glyph customisation tutorials. Side-by-side comparisons where the transparent back was the whole point. Every piece of organic content reinforced the same thing: this phone looks like nothing else in the market.

The invite system the same Carl Pei had used at OnePlus back in 2014 created scarcity. The Glyph created content. The community forum created belonging. Nothing didn’t run a single television spot.

And it worked.

India Wasn’t the Plan. India Became the Point.

Nothing’s first target markets were the UK and Europe. India was an afterthought a secondary launch, limited inventory, a market the company was testing rather than betting on.

Then the data started coming in.

India’s tech-enthusiast demographic young, design-conscious, chronically online, deeply engaged with YouTube and Instagram was exactly the audience Nothing had built its entire brand for. The people buying Nothing phones and the people making content about Nothing phones were largely the same person.

Bengaluru, in particular, became a centre of gravity. The city had the highest concentration of Nothing users in India. Not because of any specific campaign targeting the city. Because Bengaluru’s creator and tech community found the brand on their own and ran with it.

By H1 2024, Nothing was the fastest-growing smartphone brand in India 567% year-on-year growth (Counterpoint Research). In Q2 2025, still 85% YoY growth (IDC). Fastest-growing brand in the country for seven of the last eight quarters.

India crossed 2% smartphone market share. Small in absolute terms. Enormous for a brand that didn’t exist five years ago.

Carl Bhai

In March 2024, Nothing signed Ranveer Singh as brand ambassador for Phone (2a). The “Fresh Eyes” campaign. A proper Bollywood face. Traditional media. The works.

Someone called Carl Pei out on X. The question, roughly: wasn’t the whole point that you didn’t need this?

His reply: “We want to sell more phones bhai”

Then he changed his Twitter handle to Carl Bhai. The official Nothing India account became Nothing India Bhai. The community followed — hundreds of users adding “Bhai” to their own handles.

The moment could have felt like a brand trying too hard to be Indian. Instead, it felt like a CEO being honest about the tension between a scrappy origin story and the reality of scaling in a competitive market and being self-aware enough to laugh at himself while doing it.

That’s the thing about Nothing’s India story. Even the moments that look like pivots feel consistent with the brand’s character. Ranveer didn’t replace the community strategy. He amplified something that was already there. By the time he showed up, the trust was built. He was just a loudspeaker pointed at an audience that already believed.

CMF: The Sub Brand That Became a Country

In 2023, Nothing launched CMF by Nothing a sub-brand targeting the ₹10,000–20,000 price segment. Colourful. Loud. Modular. Designed to compete where the real volume in India lives.

CMF Phone 1 crossed 1 million units. Under $200.

The success wasn’t just about price. CMF understood something specific about the Indian market: at the entry level, colour is the differentiator. Where every other brand was offering black, grey, and silver, CMF launched in green, orange, and yellow. The back panel was replaceable — you could swap colours depending on your mood. It made a ₹15,000 phone feel like a fashion choice.

The community mechanics were the same as Nothing: Glyph-style design language, community forum, limited-edition drops, creator seeding. But at a price point where the potential audience was ten times larger.

In December 2025, CMF India Private Limited was officially registered as a standalone company headquartered in India, with a joint venture with Optiemus Infracom for local manufacturing, research, and export. Not a consumer market for a British brand. The global base for an independent operation.

Carl Pei said it clearly: “India today stands where China was a decade ago.”

The Store That Needed Police

On February 14, 2026 Valentine’s Day Nothing opened its first store in India.

It chose Bengaluru. Because the data pointed there. And because, in Carl Pei’s words: “Because vibes”

The store is at 660/1, 100 Feet Road, Indiranagar 5,032 square feet across two floors, in the middle of the neighbourhood that is Bengaluru’s creative and lifestyle centre. Tree-lined streets. Independent cafes. The kind of area where a design-led tech brand actually belongs.

The interior is designed after a 1970s factory assembly line. Raw concrete walls. Exposed steel. Aluminium fixtures. Glass left unfinished. The aesthetic is deliberately unpolished — the structure is the show.

When you buy a phone, it comes out on a conveyor belt. Actual testing machines are on the floor USB port testers, water resistance equipment the same tools used in the manufacturing process. Carl Pei described it this way: “There’s a production line where the product comes out. We show machines where phones go through testing. We just wanted to bring that world together.”

Alongside the factory floor: a dedicated creator studio with professional cameras and lighting, free for anyone to walk in and shoot their unboxing or hands-on content. Nothing’s co-founder called it giving “future MKBHDs” a place to start. Next to it, a personalisation counter the only Nothing store worldwide where you can customise your device on the spot. Engraving, exclusive colourways, in store only configurations.

Then a hangout zone, Seating, Claw games, Vending machines, Conveyorbelt product displays, Free snacks and beverages, A coffee shop.

Over 2,000 people showed up on day one. CMF Buds 2a were going for ₹99. The crowd exceeded what the space could handle. Police were called. Some fans who had travelled from other cities including Hyderabad were turned away without getting in. Reddit threads filled with disappointment. Akis Evangelidis, Nothing’s co-founder and India President, addressed the chaos directly: “Our primary focus throughout has been everyone’s safety”

The controversy said something that a smooth launch wouldn’t have. A brand that opened with a waitlist and a ₹2,000 deposit in 2022 now had people queuing from 5am for ₹99 earbuds four years later. That’s not a marketing outcome. That’s a culture outcome.

The Bigger Picture: RCB, Nikhil Kamath, and What the Bets Mean

In October 2025, Nothing closed a $200M Series C at a $1.3 billion valuation led by Tiger Global, with GV, Highland Europe, EQT, and others. Among the investors: Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha, who put in $21 million. An Indian investor, specifically, backing an Indian-headquartered consumer tech operation.

Total funding raised: over $450 million.

On February 3, 2026 eleven days before the Bengaluru store opened Nothing was announced as the title sponsor of Royal Challengers Bengaluru for IPL 2026 and 2027. A two-season deal. Nothing’s logo on the jersey of the defending IPL champions, a team with one of the most emotionally charged fanbases in cricket.

For context: RCB’s previous title sponsor was Qatar Airways. The deal was valued at approximately ₹75 crore over three seasons. Nothing replaced them.

The sponsorship isn’t just reach. It’s positioning. RCB’s fanbase is young, passionate, predominantly from South India, and deeply digital. It overlaps almost perfectly with Nothing’s core Indian demographic. And it ties the brand to a team that finally won a title after 18 years the kind of narrative energy money can’t manufacture.

What Nothing Actually Figured Out

Most smartphone brands in India follow a version of the same playbook: launch in the ₹10,000–15,000 segment, build distribution through offline retail, sign a cricketer, run festive ads, compete on spec sheet.

Nothing didn’t do any of that.

They built something people wanted to talk about before they built something people wanted to buy. The transparent back wasn’t just an aesthetic choice it was a content strategy. The Glyph Interface wasn’t just a feature it was a reason for a creator to make a video. The invite-only waitlist wasn’t just a supply management tactic it was demand amplification.

Every product decision reinforced the same loop: scarcity creates desire, design creates content, community creates loyalty. By the time Nothing started spending on traditional marketing — Ranveer Singh, RCB sponsorship — the brand equity was already there. Celebrity and sports amplified an existing culture rather than trying to manufacture one from scratch.

The Bengaluru store is the physical expression of this. It isn’t a showroom. It’s a studio. It’s a factory. It’s a hangout. It’s designed to be filmed and posted and talked about, the same way the phone was.

The smartest thing about the store is this line from GadgetBridge’s coverage: “The smartest thing about this launch is that it treats retail as content.”

That’s exactly it. Nothing understood that in a world where every phone looks the same and every retail experience feels the same, differentiation doesn’t come from the spec sheet. It comes from giving people something to show off a phone worth photographing, a store worth filming, a brand worth being part of.

The Contradiction at the Centre

There’s something philosophically interesting about a brand called Nothing becoming one of the most talked-about consumer tech stories in India.

The name was meant to signal absence of ego, of gimmicks, of the bloated complexity that Carl Pei felt had infected consumer electronics. Nothing, in the sense of getting out of the way and letting great design speak.

But what actually happened is that Nothing became everything in the circles that matter to it. The name on RCB jerseys. The store that stopped traffic in Indiranagar. The brand a Zerodha co-founder wrote a ₹175 crore cheque for. The company whose second-ever physical location, globally, is in India — before New York, before Tokyo.

A brand built on transparent design, in a market where transparency is rare. A London startup that found its centre of gravity in Bengaluru. A CEO who called himself Carl Bhai not as a campaign, but as a genuine reaction to someone calling him out.

That’s the story. Not a strategy document. Not a market entry playbook.

Just a brand that knew what it believed in, built products that showed it, and let the right people find them first.

The rest the 567% growth, the $1.3B valuation, the police outside the Indiranagar store followed from that.

Sources: Counterpoint Research (India smartphone growth H1 2024), IDC (Q2 2025 growth figures), TechCrunch, Wallpaper, Smartprix, Android Central, Business Standard, AFAQS, EQT Ventures / Medium, Carl Pei (X / various interviews)*