Who doesn’t like afternoon naps? Direct-to-consumer (D2C) startup Wakefit.co will now pay its employees to take naps during work hours.
Now, Sequoia-backed Wakefit’s employees have the ‘Right to Nap’ every day during work hours, Co-founder Chaitanya Ramalingegowda said in an internal email to its employees on Wednesday.
With the subject line, ‘Announcing Your “Right to Nap”‘, Chaitanya said the startup’s employees can nap between 2 to 2.30 PM as a part of the “Official Nap Time”.
“We have been in the business of sleep for over six years now and yet, have failed to do justice to a crucial aspect of rest — the afternoon nap,” Chaitanya said. “Research shows that afternoon naps help with memory, concentration, creativity, and productivity,” he added.
The company will automatically block the calendars of its over 600 employees, as per LinkedIn, during this time, it said. Wakefit is also working towards creating cosy nap pods and quiet rooms in its office to facilitate a good nap environment, the co-founder wrote.
The home and sleep solutions startup — founded in 2016 by Chaitanya Ramalingegowda and Ankit Garg — offers premium mattresses, pillows, comforters, neck pillows, and back cushions, among other things. It also offers a sleep internship, started in 2020, where employees are paid to sleep for nine hours for 100 nights.
Offline expansion
Wakefit also said it plans to launch 10 offline retail stores across Pune, Chennai, and Hyderabad. It had launched its first three stores in Bengaluru, New Delhi, and Lucknow.
The new stores — that will offer Wakefit’s overall 500 stock keeping units (SKUs) — will operate in an omnichannel model, where customers can purchase from the stores with the option to place online orders at the store.
“As a D2C brand, we are constantly connected with our customers and have thoroughly understood the fact that the touch and feel aspect is an integral factor to make a purchase decision when it comes to furniture. Materialising on this feedback from our customers, we decided to launch our very own retail stores across the country,” Vishal Khandelwal, Head of Retail, Wakefit, said.
With an average size of 3,000 sq.ft., the stores will be located in areas with a high density of furniture retailers to drive organic footfalls. Vishal added the company’s furniture segment contributes nearly 23 percent of its monthly revenue.
The startup expects these offline stores to contribute close to 20 percent of its annual revenue. In FY21, Wakefit had reported annual revenue of Rs 416 crore. “We are currently growing at a rate of 2.5 to 3X every year, and we have been consistently introducing newer products into our portfolio,” said Vishal.
Since its inception, Wakefit has served over eight lakh customers across 19,000 pin codes in India.
