[5] His father was an Indian independence activist[6] who, having been imprisoned for his political activities, fled Bengal in the 1920s in order to avoid further persecution by the British colonial police.

[7] Bose first displayed his entrepreneurial skills and his interest in electronics at age thirteen when, during the World War II years, he enlisted school friends as co-workers in a small home business repairing model trains and home radios, to supplement his family's income.

He completed his PhD in Electrical Engineering from MIT, writing a thesis on non-linear systems under the supervision of Norbert Wiener and Yuk-Wing Lee.

During his early years as a professor, Bose purchased a high-end stereo system in 1956 and was disappointed to find that speakers with impressive technical specifications failed to reproduce the realism of a live performance.

His research on acoustics led him to develop a stereo loudspeaker that would reproduce, in a domestic setting, the dominantly reflected sound field that characterizes the listening space of the audience in a concert hall.

For initial capital to fund his company in 1964, Bose turned to angel investors, including his MIT thesis advisor and professor, Yuk-Wing Lee.

These patents were in the area of loudspeaker design and non-linear, two-state modulated, Class-D power processing.

[11] The company Bose founded employed 11,700 people worldwide as of 2016[update] and produces products for home, car, and professional audio, as well as conducting basic research in acoustics and other fields.

In a 2004 interview in Popular Science magazine, he said: "I would have been fired a hundred times at a company run by MBAs.