One-of-a-Kind Innovation Recreates ‘Mother’s Womb’ Feeling to Help Newborns Sleep
There are some things that no one tells you before you become a parent. One of them is how, for the foreseeable future, you will remain sleep deprived. I was always told, ‘Nap when your baby naps.’ That sounds just about perfect, doesn’t it? Here’s what happens in reality. It used to take me approximately 45 minutes to get my son to sleep which would involve walking with him, putting him on my lap and gently patting him, and rocking him till he finally went to sleep.
Imagine now that after spending a good 45 minutes doing all this, you put your child on the bed and lie down to catch up on some sleep, which would take you about 20 minutes. Before you know it, you are awoken again with a howling child beside you.
Help your baby sleep better and longer with Nap Nap Mats. Buy here.
Your own sleep lasted for precisely 15 minutes, and now, you feel terribly disoriented and have a throbbing headache.
Welcome to parenthood!
Addressing this very concern that most new parents face, Mumbai-based start-up Nap Nap Mat led by co-founders Swapnil Rao and Sameer Agarwal, has come up with a solution. In this exclusive interview, we at The Better India (TBI) caught up with Sameer who explains what the product does, why they chose to work in this space, and how parents have taken to this product.
“A quick Google search will show you that for new parents, sleep is the number one problem for which they are trying to find solutions. We knew that the struggle is real and with no product in the market to address this, we decided to try and find workable solutions,” says Sameer.
Our solution is a mat that helps the baby sleep soundly. The mat is said to recreate for the new-born a feeling of being inside the mother’s womb.
There are four different modes to choose from:
-The first one is advisable for new-borns, given the gentle vibrations.
-The next mode has a slightly stronger vibration for babies slightly older, and in a similar way, modes three and four can be used for older babies.
Sameer explains, “This product has been designed for new-borns and can be used until six months of age. That too only because post that the child starts to move around a lot on the bed and might not always be sleeping on the mat.”
Innovation in the baby-product market
Sameer says that while there were a few international brands that found space within the Indian markets, there weren’t any Indian brands and that is what the duo set out to explore. “In November 2017, we discussed the idea and spent considerable time hashing it out. Subsequently, in 2018 we had our first prototype ready and then tested this with over 500 mothers from across the country. The final iteration of the product was launched in August 2018 and by September 2018 it was out in the market.”
When asked what the initial conversation revolved around before the product came into being, Sameer says, “Our biggest learnings came from the various conversations we had with our potential clients. With each conversation we had, we realised that we wanted to create a problem-solving product, which was very cool in its perspective. While we understood that sleep was a huge issue we found that there was nothing to help.”
The Genesis
So what was the journey like for Sameer that steered him into becoming an entrepreneur, I ask. “An engineering graduate from Bombay University, I went on to pursue a Masters at
Northeastern & MIT. I stayed in Boston for almost eight and a half years and worked with various start-ups. In 2016 I came back to India and was part of a start-up called ClassHopr, which I co-founded. That gave me a sense of how business is done in India and helped me ease into the systems here.”
Coming from a business family, while starting a venture wasn’t completely alien to Sameer, it was his first time handling things on his own. He then worked with his father in the family business for almost four years before the itch to start something new caught on and that was when Nap Nap Mat was born in November 2017.
“Both my partner, Swapnil, and I wanted to get into something that more tuned to the Indian environment. It was also a time when many of our friends were having babies and we were seeing, first-hand, some of the problems that they were faced with,” says Sameer.
Sameer speaks about how while lack of sleep is not necessarily counted as a medical issue; it leads to so many other issues that could potentially be medical in nature. The crux for Sameer and Swapnil was to create a product that could help mothers and babies sleep better and therefore perform better.
“There was a research conducted by Harvard Medical and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts on ‘Stochastic resonance’, which basically is the combination of white noise and gentle vibrations, that helps reduce sleep apnea, bradycardia & oxygen desaturation among preterm babies,” he says.
During their research, Sameer and the team also found that premature babies, born almost 3 weeks earlier than the due date, as being susceptible to obstructive sleep apnea, an ailment characterised by increased upper-airway resistance that narrows airways.
Such children often require assistance to breathe, he says. “The only non-invasive
vibration-therapy based stimulation method to help reduce sleep apnea is the Nap Nap Mat. This helps them breathe better and that in turn helps them grow better.”
What mistakes did you make when you started working on the product I ask, to which Sameer chuckles, and says, “The first mat prototype we made was rather small. We got the sizing all wrong. It was when we were testing it that we realised that the mothers want a bigger mat that will comfort babies between 0-1 year rather than 0-3 months, which is what we set out to do in the beginning.”
Lap versus mat
Given that the Indian market was never looking for a product to specifically put babies to sleep and help them sleep better, Sameer says that initially even making that conversational breakthrough was a task. This took me back to when I had delivered my first child; everytime he would cry there would be at least three people ready to pick him up and soothe him back to sleep.
With this happening, it soon became what my child got used to. It was all good as long as I had people around me. When I came back to my home, with just my husband and I being around, carrying him to soothe him everytime he cried was becoming a huge task – not to mention the strain that it ended up putting on our backs as well.
Would my mother approve of this product? Perhaps not, but that is exactly the mindset that Sameer and his team are trying to change. With more young parents choosing to raise children on their own, without the help of their parents, products like this only make that journey a tad less stressful.
Some of the pros of the mat are:
- Given the size of the mat, it is easy to carry and fits into bouncers, strollers etc.
- With one complete charge the mat can be used for almost 10 days.
- Given that the mat cover is waterproof, it can be easily cleaned.
- The product is CE, ISO 9001:2015 certified and also meets U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) Safety Standards.
- Some of the major NICU centres in Mumbai and Bangalore are using the NapNap Mat on preemies to successfully treat sleep apnea. and provide much-needed comfort to newborns in hospitals
- This product comes with a 1-year-warranty as well.
Has it been easy? Not in the least. Sameer says that while they have a very loyal and ardent supporter base there are many who are very sceptical of the product and are still on the fence about whether or not to adopt this new technology. As a mother to two school-going children now, if I had the chance to use this product when they were infants, I would have most certainly given it a try.
Help your baby sleep better and longer with Nap Nap Mats. Buy here.
(Edited by Saiqua Sultan)