The Sleep Company, an online retailer of mattresses, has received Series B funding of ₹177 crore from Premji Invest and Fireside Ventures. The latest round also saw participation from venture debt fund Alteria Capital.
Founded by Priyanka Salot and Harshil Salot, The Sleep Company, owned by Comfort Grid Technologies Pvt. Ltd, has so far raised ₹190.4 crore in funds. It raised ₹13.4 crore in a pre-Series A round led by Fireside Ventures in July last year.
The first round also saw participation from LogX Ventures (pre-Series A) and Varun Alagh, co-founder of Mamaearth (pre-Series A).
The Sleep Company sells a range of products, including mattresses, pillows, cushions, as well as beds and chairs. In the mattress space, the company competes with Sleepwell, Springwel, Duroflex, Kurl-on and Coirfit. Among online brands, its rivals include about half a dozen companies like Wakefit, SleepyCat, Sleepyhead, and SleepX. The company said it patented a “SmartGrid” technology, which, unlike memory foam, provides support to “the right parts of the body” without using springs or latex.
“Our investment is part of our broader thesis of India getting more online, premiumization and increasing aspirational demand from tier-one cities. As per capita income increases, we see higher demand across consumption categories, including comfort,” said a spokesperson for Premji Invest.
Dipanjan Basu, a partner at Fireside Ventures, said, “Sleep is emerging as an important category in the space of overall wellness. We are now seeing sleep-tech emerge as a fast-growing ecosystem both in India as well as globally. We have seen their business grow rapidly over the last year. They have an omnichannel market strategy, and we are excited to double down on our investment and participate in the current round.”
Harshil Salot said the company would deploy the capital to add 22 offline stores to the existing three by March and expand the employee base. The company, he said, was also selling in Japan, the UK and the United Arab Emirates.
“There are all kinds of players in this market, like legacy brands, which are mainly offline brands, as well as new-age brands. A lot of the industry uses memory foam and spring. We broke the clutter by patenting our product technology. While the company began as digital-first, within three years, we’ve started expanding offline and have three stores in Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. The idea will be to own and operate our own stores because third-party commissions in this space are very high,” co-founder Priyanka Salot said.
“We have seen a huge consumer change in the last two to three years. A lot of it has to do with people being home during covid. People have become very health conscious, and they want to spend on quality products that they believe will help them upgrade their health or the quality of life,” she added.
According to analytics website Statista, revenue in the mattresses segment in India was about $223.40 million in 2022 and the market is expected to grow annually by 9.79% between 2022 and 2026). However, this is minuscule compared to the US market at $11.8 billion.
