India, Sept. 17 -- The headphones and earphones market is a highly personalised segment, given that there is hardly any plain vanilla hardware. Most brands build with a design differentiation in mind, be it casual/home listening or music workout, genre-specific features or immersive gaming requirements, hoping to enthral their target audience.

As new trends come up, existing brands go all out to fine-tune their products. But in a fiercely competitive market with deep-pocketed players, new brands on the block often find it difficult to innovate or attract the right audience.

A few years ago, Delhi-based headphones startup Leaf Studios faced this conundrum. Not wanting to enter the market without a target audience in mind, or a USP, for t...