Surbhi Jain is the founder of Neend, a Bengaluru-based startup. Neend is a sleep app in our regional language that provides relaxing sleep stories, soothing sleep sounds, and ambiance to help you sleep better or more effectively. All of the sleep stories on the app are a unique blend of activity-based relaxation, soothing narration, calming music, white noise, ASMR, hypnosis, and Yog Nidra.

More about Neend

The journey of Neend started during the Covid pandemic. At the end of 2020, the founder of the Neend app, Surbhi Jain, and her entire family got infected with Covid, which made the situation very tough during that period. Not taking the preventive measures of Covid leads to an increase in her stress level. During this scenario, she had to look after her family, which kept her awake all night and affected her sleeping schedule. 

Even after getting recovered from Covid, Surbhi had some weaknesses due to the improper sleeping schedule. By this, she started experiencing some sleep-related problems like issues in Physical or mental health with an inappropriate lifestyle. During those 2-3 months, she started doing research to fix her sleeping habits. And from this, the idea of the Neend app got established.

Multiple factors affect sleeping-cycle

Proper sleep affects our physical and mental functioning. It increases the ability to fight disease and also develop immunity. It also affects metabolism positively and helps us prevent chronic diseases too. 

USP of Neend

While trying some other sleep apps, which consist of bedtime stories, music, meditation, etc. It didn’t work as the concept of bedtime stories is an orthodox way of approaching to fit in this modern world. The language contained in those apps is a foreign language with different accents, and that brings limitations for the general public.

Sleep content is a very passive sort of use case. It must need attention while listening to the language. And that is possible when the app is built in the native language. This feature can make the app more convenient and better understood by the audience. 

Moreover, Neend is trying to help people with a couple of other products. It also launched a commerce store that produces curated and crafted products. These products are basically sleeping supplements that would help customers or users fall asleep quickly.

Funds raised by Neend

1. Neend has already grown towards multiple languages with the increase on the linguistic front. Including the expansion of more geography as well.
2. Neend has raised some funds to develop and go deeper into the product portfolio.

The customer base of Neend app 

More than 92% of users fall asleep while listening to the content of the Neend app within 10-15 minutes. This means making changes in the lifestyles of people who have been on sleeping pills for a few years. Such people are getting rid of sleeping pills, and instead of choosing the pills, they are experiencing positive changes by using the Neend app. 

With the intake of pills, any individual may get some side effects, which can lead to other causes of mental or physical health issues. Neend is an audio app that does not have any side effects. 

Effect of the Neend app on women users

1. Cultural aspect -  Neend's customer base is 40% of women and 60% of men. Women are prone to have more insomniac cases compared to men. In India, there are multiple factors such as cultural aspects, as women mainly do the household work which can result in their sleeping schedule. 
2. Hormonal changes -  A woman may find issues during sleep timings if she is pregnant. In post-delivery cases, it is difficult to sleep when the baby wakes up at midnight. Another example is, women find it difficult to have proper sleep because of their menstrual cycle every month.

Reports have also stated that Indians are sleep-deprived and get less than eight hours of sleep regularly. Additionally, it takes a toll on the economy as well as 11% of respondents took leaves from work due to lack of sleep, while a similar proportion fell asleep at work. A whopping 58% of respondents said their work suffered from lack of adequate sleep, so it’s not as small a problem as it may seem.

Advice for young entrepreneurs

Surbhi Jan, the founder of the Neend app, suggests that “Don’t think too much and just go with your gut feeling, do experiments, and learn from your customers. Get unbiased feedback.”

Goals and expansion plans of Neend

Neend crossed a 1 million user base and touched more than 3 million customers. Furthermore, the stories, meditation, and music have been heard more than 2 crore times so far by the users, which sets a wonderful benchmark for the app. 

The goals and expansion of Neend also include building ‘Go Bharat', where geography won’t be a constraint and it will reach every individual across the country. Other than that, Neend and the team are creating a product for more languages to increase the flexibility of understanding for the users.

(Edited by Neeraj Chouhan)