How WakeFit became a 700 crore revenue D2C brand ft. Founder, Ankit Garg

The Neon Show

Normally for the most of us our buying focus is around products like -

# Which smartphone to buy?

# Which laptop to buy?

# Which car to buy? And so on.

But have you ever thought for a bit about which mattress should I buy? Probably No, right.

This is the reason why, in almost the last 10-15 years, prior to 2015-16, we’ve barely seen any innovation in mattresses or competitive pricing amongst brands?

But a lot of that has changed in the last 3-4 years, with companies like Sleepyhead, The Sleep Company, Wakefit and a few other D2C mattress brands coming up.

In today’s episode we’ve brought Ankit Garg, Director and Co-founder of Wakefit, to talk about the journey of the brand and how he and his Co-founder, Chaitanya Ramalingegowda, won the hearts of several customers in this segment.

Founded in 2016, in current financial year, Wakefit recorded 2X growth, clocking Rs 410 crore revenue. The year earlier, it registered a turnover of Rs 197 crore.

They manufacture all their products in-house across nine factories in Bengaluru, Jodhpur, and Delhi.

While they only sell online and drive most of their sales from Amazon (i.e. mostly by new customers) and their own website (i.e. mostly by returning customers), they also have over 22 experience centres — six in metros and nine in smaller towns.

During the episode, Ankit talks about focusing on making their customers happy, understanding simple yet viral strategies to continue driving up their revenue and much more.

Notes -

02:58 - Getting a taste of failure early-on

09:05 - Working on your idea part-time during the early phase

12:25 - Building a D2C vs B2B company

15:17 - Initial pricing experiment of selling mattresses on Amazon

18:16 - Core habit of talking to customers

22:10 - Focus on NPS & customer happiness

25:23 - Removing inefficiencies in the product to offer better prices

26:17 - Revenue growth over the years

32:09 - Approach while reaching out to investors

36:13 - Wakefit’s 100 Nights Trial campaign

48:01 - Wakefit’s sleep campaign

50:30 - Advice for D2C founders

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