Every parent wants their children to turn out well and be successful in life. However, to make that happen, they have a lot to do and give to their children, apart from just feeding and sending them to schools.
As a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so is the life of every child. Parents have to start doing and giving the best they can, in anything, from the start or early stage itself. Good foundation matters a lot in anything. However, most parents don’t realize this and often have a huge expectation on their children when they grow up. Being healthy is one of the most important things for any human being to do anything in life. To make the children live a healthy life or turn out well, parents need to provide their children a lot of things besides just food. Of the many, giving a good sleep is one of the most important things, which many parents often struggle to fulfill it due to various reasons.
Well, here’s a startup that strives to solve that real-world problem and make new parent’s life easier by helping them tackle one of the biggest challenges of parenthood – Ensuring the baby and themselves get an adequate amount of sleep. We got the opportunity to interact with the founders of NapNap where they shared about their company and what they do to bring joy and comforts to infants and parents all over the world through technology, innovation and design.
All about the startup – NapNap
NapNap is a collective of creative innovators with a common cause - to ensure the baby and the parents get an adequate amount of sleep.
The startup solves real-world problems with the creation of functional, simple and elegantly designed products and solutions. Their ingenious engineering techniques and skills are complemented by contemporary and tasteful aesthetics.
NapNap strives to make a new parent’s life easier by helping them tackle the big boulders of parenthood, so that they can spend more of their time and effort enjoying the presence of their baby.
NapNap offering and how it helps solve the No. 1 parenting problem in the world
The company’s flagship product NapNap Baby Mattress is solving the No. 1 parenting problem in the world – Newborn Sleep! The NapNap Mat is a portable soothing mat with proprietary Smart Sleep Technology that mimics a mother's womb and gently lulls babies to sleep.
NapNap Mat is completely researched and manufactured by its team in India and meets all global standards to make it child-safe and effective. It is CPSC certified, CE certified, ISO 9001-2015 certified, and meets British Safety Standards. NapNap is also a proud member of the Make-In-India Initiative.
Different use cases for NapNap
NapNap Mat can be used in the following two scenarios:
By Doctors in NICUs:
NapNap’s mat produces stochastic resonance that successfully treats preterm infants experiencing apnea of prematurity, disrupted breathing, bradycardia (slowed heart rate) and oxygen desaturation (diminished oxygen levels). The science is based on clinical trials conducted by Harvard Medical and Beth Israel Deaconess.
By New Parents at home and Outdoors:
The soothing vibrations and white noise mimic a mother’s womb and lull babies to sleep thereby freeing up valuable time for the parents. NapNap worked with hundreds of new parents, doctors, and sleep experts to make the perfect product to help baby sleep better.
The journey of NapNap and its team
Sameer and Swapnil are qualified engineers, passionate product designers and serial entrepreneurs (Ex NEU, MIT, NUS, Korea Uni). They co-founded NapNap in 2018 with a vision to solve real-world parenting problems by creating functional, simple and elegantly designed products. NapNap’s products are founded in proven science, meticulously engineered and are complemented by contemporary and tasteful aesthetics.
Explaining the journey, the founders said: “In late 2017, our friends had a preterm baby and the baby was always in distress and the baby and our friends just didn’t sleep. We wanted to help them and started looking for solutions. Being engineers and product designers ourselves, we got straight to work and within a month prepared the first prototype of the NapNap Mat and it worked! The little one was instantly soothed and soon developed a healthy sleep routine. After feedback from over a hundred more parents and several iterations later, we launched NapNap Mat as it is today.”
NapNap’s plans for the coming years
The company plans to create an ecosystem of Smart Interconnected products to redefine how technology and data will enable parenting in the future. NapNap is leading this change by solving one parenting problem at a time.
The founders said they plan to continue to work with single mothers and give them a platform to generate wealth in all forms (not just money).
NapNap Mat is the only non-intrusive, low-cost device that actually cures sleep apnea in preemies, thereby saving thousands of infant lives. The founders said they will try and bring down the infant mortality rate down by half and hopefully save millions of infant lives that are lost every year due to insufficient neo-natal care. They also said that they will continue to lead conversations around equal parenting, breastfeeding in public, PPD and sleep hygiene to create awareness and drive long term change. NapNap aims to capture over 40% of the baby lifestyle products space by 2023.
When asked about the biggest need/void in their startup, whether it is development, market access, channels, or publicity, the founders said publicity is the biggest challenge.
NapNap’s competitors and the difference between them
NapNap doesn’t really have competitors, but there are other sleep enabling products out there in the market. Here is a comparison of between them.
On how the world of parenting has changed with the advent of technology, the founders said:
“The largest number of live births is taking place in India -- 27 million per year. Besides, the children are coming late in life for urban middle-class parents. This leads to certain favorable market conditions for Rawsome. Rapidly growing Indian economy is causing an increase in disposable income for the urban middle class and upper middle class. The changing socio-economic status of women and rapid Internet penetration is leading to growing awareness about buying quality products including international products.”
“Another major trend is rapid urbanization. People are leaving their hometowns and traditional occupations and migrating to cities in hoards in search of better employment and a higher standard of living. This, in turn, leads to an increase in Nuclear Families. Most families in urban India are seeking only one child or a maximum of two. Therefore, the amount of money they are willing to spend on that child is much more. Interest in the child's well-being, fashion and care, along with increasing purchasing power, are creating a wealth of opportunities for the baby care segment. The same situation, demography and dynamics are going to continue for years to come, therefore, the baby care market can actually grow much quicker than any other category.”
