Fitness bands are out, replaced by wearables to monitor sleep— not just the quantity but also the quality.
“My sleep was not doing well so I thought of putting a tracker on me,” said Prashant Sachan, founder & CEO of AppsForBharat, who has been wearing a ring at night for the last four months.
“As a startup founder, if I put a metric somewhere, it would improve that.”
For Social Enterprise winner, Aniket Doegar, cofounder & CEO of Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions, sleep issues began during Covid when the pandemic brought with it a heightened level of anxiety.
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“Right now it is only measuring and tracking but isn’t changing behaviour. So I might look at something that will help nudge my behaviour as well.”Prateep Basu, CEO & cofounder of satellite Earth observation data and analytics firm SatSure, has been tracking his heart rate for the last two years after he started getting anxiety attacks.
If one is stressed, their resting heart rate will be above 80 or 90, so he aims to keep it around 60, he said, explaining why he thinks this is a better measure than sleep.
“If I’m not at around 60 BPM, that’s a good indicator for me to take a break,” Basu said.
“At that time, I do some deep breathing or meditation or even watch some Reels of standup comedians or look at memes.”
Satish Kannan, cofounder & CEO of MediBuddy, is a step ahead, he tracks many more body parameters than just sleep.
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But that has a business angle as well—he keeps trying out the latest products in the market to see if he can integrate them to his platform.
“For sleep, I use the Apple watch, then I use the Ultrahuman ring and Dozee, which is under the bed and tracks how much you toss and turn while asleep. I also use the sugar monitoring patch by Abbott and a Whoop band also to see if they can be integrated into MediBuddy.”
Zomato’s Deepinder Goyal wore the Ultrahuman Smart Glucose Monitoring patch while Accel’s Prashanth Prakash sported both an Oura ring, which provides round-the-clock insights into sleep, fitness and stress, as well as a Whoop band, which monitors sleep, strain, recovery and health.
Even Flipkart’s Kalyan Krishnamurthy sported a Whoop band.
“These devices help because you become slightly more disciplined,” Ankit Nagori, cofounder of Curefoods, said. “I’ve always been into sports and fitness. I used to be a cricketer but now I play badminton. This band helps me mainly to monitor my recovery so I can plan my workout for the next day accordingly.”
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Some like Kunal Sachdev, cofounder at Debtworks, have jumped off health wearables and just believe in healthy eating and supplements.
“I was also using a smartwatch but it became more of a hassle because you’re always looking at what your heart rate is, sleep time and it brings a lot of anxiety,” he said.
“It has been more than a year since I stopped using it. I used the Fitbit, the Apple Watch, the Ultrahuman ring—now I just supplement my diet with magnesium.”
