Hot stamping is a processing technique used to form a few Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS). In hot stamping, boron-containing AHSS sheets are formed at elevated temperature and subsequently quenched to room temperature in the forming dies. Hot stamping is known to reduce the forming load and spring-back with an increase in the yield strength of the steel. The major factors influencing the mechanical properties and spring-back of the hot-stamped component are alloy composition, forming temperature, soaking time at forming temperature, plastic deformation in the forming process and cooling rate during quenching. In this work, the influence of cooling rate on the phase transformations, microstructure and spring-back phenomenon is studied. A novel V-bending technique is presented for effectively measuring the spring-back using a thermo-mechanical simulator, Gleeble™. Results indicate that the spring-back decreases and becomes close to zero at a cooling rate of 20 K s-1 for a hot stamping steel. This work also studies the influence of various strains in the austenite phase on the mechanical properties and the kinetics of phase transformations. Results indicate that the application of strain lowers the martensite start (Ms) temperature; this is however unaffected by the magnitude of strain. The martensite finish (Mf) temperature is found to decrease with an increase in the magnitude of strain indicating sluggishness in the kinetics of austenite to martensite transformation. EBSD studies indicate that this sluggishness is due to the selective growth of martensite variants with higher misorientation angles. The ultimate tensile strength and elongation at failure are not affected up to a strain of 0.06 in the austenite phase; these values decrease with a further increase in the macroscopic strain. These variations in the mechanical properties correlate with martensite variant selection and an increase in lath size. The present work also investigates the influence of boron on the flow behaviour in hot stamping steels under various warm working temperatures (300 to 773 K) and strain rates (10-2 to 10-4 s-1). Results indicate the occurrence of DSA in the temperature range of 473 to 573 K. The ultimate tensile strength (UTS) is found to increase and then decrease with an increase in the temperature due to a combined effect of dynamic strain aging and precipitation strengthening. The increase in the UTS by DSA is higher for steel with higher boron content (35 ppm) than steel with lower boron content (29 ppm). The formation of CrFeMn(CN) during warm stamping along with solid solution boron contributes to the dynamic strain aging.​