Young Turks: Meet the trailblazers disrupting sleep and activewear industries in India – CNBC TV18
The Sleep Company, co-founded by Priyanka and Harshil Salot, is transforming the sleep industry, which had long remained stagnant. Its patented SmartGRID Technology delivers unparalleled comfort and support, redefining how we rest. In just four years, the company has achieved an impressive ARR of ₹500 crore, serving over 2 lakh satisfied customers. With 100+ stores across 30 cities and growing international presence, The Sleep Company is a true disruptor and the recipient of IBLA Startup of the Year award for 2024.
BlissClub, founded in 2019 by Minu Margeret, is changing the game in India’s activewear market. Focused on spreading happiness through movement, the brand designs versatile, comfortable, and culturally relevant apparel for Indian women. In just three years, BlissClub has reached an ARR of ₹100 crore, fueled by a loyal and rapidly expanding community. Recognised as IBLA Breakout Brand of the Year for 2024, BlissClub’s commitment to inclusivity and real-life wearability is setting new benchmarks in the activewear industry.
CNBC-TV18 spoke with Harshil Salot, Co-Founder of The Sleep Company, and Minu Margeret, Founder & CEO of BlissClub, to explore their journeys, the challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned along the way.
Below are excerpts of the discussion.
Q: They often say that some of the most successful companies in the world were founded by people who encountered a problem that they wanted to solve. And that’s exactly the genesis of The Sleep Company. So from your start in 2019 to where you find yourself today, run me through the big milestones.
Salot: We started because of a personal problem that we were facing with my wife. When we were expecting our first child, she was absolutely finding it very, very difficult to sleep like most pregnant women do. And we at that point of time tried different products and we realised that there was a huge gap in the industry and the product quality was not up to the mark. There were not too many shops where you could get a good experience, where you could get educated about the right product. And hence, we kind of took it upon ourselves to really come up with a disruption.
It took us about one and a half years of very, very intense research before we could launch this disruptive technology, which we call the SmartGRID. It’s our own patented technology which we believe is the biggest disruption in comfort science. It’s the only material which can be both soft and firm at the same time and can ensure that it can adapt to different body parts and give you amazing comfort, but at the same time it can give you amazing spine support as well.
It’s been five years. We started as a digital-first brand. We really focused on educating the customers about the benefits of this technology. In the first two years, the idea was to get the product right. We took a lot of feedback from different customers and we made a lot of changes to the product to get it right. And then, we realised over a period of two years that the product market fit was very, very firmly established. Most of the people or consumers who were trying it, were saying it’s the best cure to insomnia. They were saying that they had back pain issues which kind of went away. And that’s the time when we realised that we really need to be a brand which is disrupting and that’s the time when we started our omni channel journey.
So we opened our first store in June of 2022 and since then we have opened a store every five days in the country. Today, we have more than 127 stores across 35 cities where we continue to disrupt, where we continue to educate our customers and give them amazing experience of our technology and guide them on why these are the best products for them.
Q: Like Harshal and Priyanka, was there a personal sort of trigger that led you to found BlissClub? What was it really about when you got started?
Margeret: Yeah, 100% it was a very strong personal problem. I’m a pretty active person. I lead an active lifestyle and would always struggle to find great comfortable technical clothes that just you can be in. Most brands that offer clothes in India either are fast fashion brands that are not thinking about quality or building for the athletes, which means they may be super technical, but they’re not comfortable as well.
But for the folks who are really thinking of activity as a lifestyle, I feel like there was such a large gap and I would never find clothes here. A lot of times I’m travelling abroad and I’m picking up products in the US, made in India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh. It made no sense. I was really, really excited by the fact that, you know, comfort is a large space that apparel has not evolved to. If you think about footwear, sneakerisation is exactly that revolution where track shoes became sneakers because now you’re wearing it 10 hours a day, five days a week. And that’s what got me really excited that I’m really looking for these products, these great functional, comfortable products that I can be in at any point of time and there’s no one building that specifically for India.
I’m 5 feet 2 inches in height and I would never find leggings which fit me because they were all built for western bodies because most brands in India in the western wear market were sourcing into India market and not really building for our bodies. So be it the fit, be it the climate – if you’re from Bombay or Chennai there is a lot of humidity. There are not a lot of fabrics meant for it. So that was the personal journey that there’s a large consumer problem to solve for and doubling it down with the fact that no one is solving for it for my country. And so it felt like that’s definitely an opportunity to build for.
Q: While we’re talking a lot and the focus is a lot on the front end, let’s talk about the back end. Fixing the back end, getting the back end right, take me through the pieces that you focused on there, what you prioritised, how important that journey is, getting the supply chain in place, take me through that, which very few people actually focus on or talk about.
Salot: For us, our entire supply chain is kind of the backbone of the entire organisation. So since day one, we’ve been on SAP as our ERP system and we have our own manufacturing. So we are both forward as well as backward integrated completely.
We have two manufacturing facilities employing more than 300 people where we make our own products. We also have two other warehouses and we use a lot of tech to kind of forecast demand and also ensure that we service them in the right way.
So we have an on time delivery rate of more than 99% and we are able to send most products to customers within a period of three to four working days across the country through our factories and through to our warehousing network.
We believe that the back end is extremely, extremely important and we continue to focus on investing in that. In fact, we’re just modernising our entire plant on the outskirts of Mumbai and moving into a much bigger facility, which is more than 2,50,000 square feet.
Q: What is the capex likely in the year coming up on account of the expansion that you foresee?
Salot: We’ve been very, very lean in terms of our back-end capex. So I think the new plant would cost us about ₹15-20 crores of investment.
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