Daybreak - How Wakefit and other new-age mattress companies are selling you sleep

Episode Date: May 29, 2024

New-age D2C mattress brands like Wakefit and The Sleep Company have successfully made orthopaedic mattresses into a mass product. They are changing the landscape of the mattress market in India with their innovative science and tech based approach and clever marketing techniques. Wakefit, for example, literally offers a “sleep internship" where all you have to do is "sleep for 9 hours everyday for a hundred days and earn up to 10 lakh rupees."It's come to a point where even older and bigger mattress makers have had to adapt these changes and start selling these orthopedic mattresses.But is this really about the science or more about the selling?Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Raman Ganesh, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production.

Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording. Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. It's the first thing that comes to your mind when I say the words, sleep internship. If you go to Google and type, get paid to sleep, you'll get a whole bunch of results ranging from gigs for people who love to sleep to a picture of.

of a guy who looks like his mind has been blown because the headline says $500 per night to sleep. The stuff is real though. Take the D2C Indian Mattress brand Wakefit for example. It literally offers what it calls a sleep internship. The website says sleep for nine hours every day for 100 days and earn up to 10 lakh rupees. The company sends your mattress and that's it. All you have to do is sleep. The website features the test.

of a man called Vijay who took this sleep internship up and they have before and after pictures of him. Before he was unfit and overweight, but after the sleep internship he is fit. The mirror selfie shows him flexing his muscles. Now, if your brain just went, excuse me what? Like mine when I first saw it, of course, he did not lose weight by sleeping on a wake-fit mattress. He worked out, but he says he couldn't have done it with that. proper sleep, which in turn wouldn't have been possible without the nice Wakefit mattress that he got. Wakefit ran three seasons of the sleep internship. But why is a company going to such

lengths for marketing? You see, these new age mattress companies like Wakefit and the sleep company and others want to create a mass market for what they call orthopedic mattresses. They position themselves as these innovative tech-focused companies that are constantly working on the science of sleep. Smart grid technology, body mapping, three-layered body IQ orthopedic memory foam, you get the drift. It's come to a point now where even older and bigger mattress makers have had to adapt to these changes and start selling these orthopedic mattresses. But is this really about the science or is it more about selling? Welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from The Ken.

I'm your host, Nick Dha Sharma, and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleague Rahal Philipoza and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 29th of May. My colleague, the Ken reporter Noha Buberay, decided to visit a few mattress showrooms in Bangalore to get a sense of what it is like buying a mattress these days.

and let me just say it was quite something. She went to one of Deuroflex's experience centres. The store guide came up to her with a list of questions on a tablet. They asked her what type of a mattress does she use currently? What issues does she have? Does she have back pain? Does she need spine support? What side does she face while sleeping?

What's her preferred sight to sleep on? Et cetera, etc. Then they carried out what they call body mapping. They got her to lie down in her. her sleeping position, and the test mattress had sensors that are connected to the tablet, where she could see all the pressure points. And then, finally, based on this, the store guide recommended a mattress to her. So, what's really caused this shift towards these smart feature-focused mattresses in the market?

Priyanka Salode, the founder of the Sleep Company, which is a Mumbai-based comfort tech brand, said it was because of an evolution in consumer behavior. She said it really took off during the pandemic, this focus on health and conscious buying. And this is when these D2C companies like WakeFit and Sleepy Cat and Sleep Company got the first mover advantage because they were already online. And also another advantage for these newer companies was that they were catering directly to consumers. There was no need for a distributor because older mattress companies depended heavily on these distributors. So companies like Wakefit, which was last valued at $275 million, came in and disrupted the whole market. Older brands were so affected that Deuroflex, which is a 60-year-old brand, for example, found it necessary to launch a subsidiary called Sleepy Head to cater to this ever-growing online demand for mattresses, especially among first-time users.

Before this, if you wanted to buy a mattress, a decent mattress, you'd have to spend anything better. between 40,000 to 1 lakh rupees. But now, these new age brands offer products that are 25 to 50% cheaper and with the kind of quality that is as good as traditional mattress makers like curl on or sleep well. And apart from the pricing, look at how these companies are selling their products, like the sleep internship at Wakefield, sleep trials and all kinds of flashy marketing campaigns. And an important part of this marketing strategy is this whole focus on orthoids.

If you've purchased a mattress in the last couple of years, you've definitely heard that word thrown around a lot. Because orthopedic mattresses are not new. But it's only recently that they have become this mass product. And of course, a lot of that is because of these new age companies and their marketing gimmicks. But we spoke to the co-founder of Wake Fit, Chetanya Ramalingegora, and he said that orthopedic mattresses are not for people with chronic back pain. They're not a magic pill. but they are more like a proactive investment to prevent mishaps from happening.

But do we actually need an orthopedic mattress? Most orthopedicians that we spoke to disagreed. Ravindranar, an orthopedician from Bangal told us that they, which is mattress brands, are not reinventing the wheel and that there is also no such definition of an orthopedic mattress. It is a term coined by marketing folks. But you might say, hey, what about people who have back pain, spine issues, or like me, spondylosis? Virish Murgodi, a Bangalore-based orthopedic surgeon, explained it to us. He said that the major part of the lower back pain management is working on ergonomics,

taking frequent breaks, correcting your lifting techniques at your workplace or your house if you're doing some manual work, keeping the spine neutral and not bending it beyond 20 to 30 degrees. And he said a mattress has no role to play in any of this. Now, of course, there is a possibility that some experts might not entirely agree with this, but here's the thing. Dureflex's orthopedic mattresses are recommended by the National Health Academy and independent body of professionals from health, medicine, social and behavioral science fields. Similarly, the Sleep Company's mattresses are certified by the All India Health Association,

a group of doctors and health professionals. But not even one of the seven orthopedians that the Ken spoke with knew of these organizations or whether or not they can actually recommend these brands. I went to each of these websites and read the about-us section, and they don't look like they have any kind of government approval or accredition, Which is why even Dr. Morgodi pointed out that there is a need for some kind of a standard grading system or a central association that recommends mattresses. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken India's first subscriber-focused business news platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings.

A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. To subscribe, head to the Ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on top of the Ken website. Today's episode was hosted by Snigda Sharma and edited by Rajiv CN.