The seed round was led by Fireside Ventures, with participation from Antler India, Climber Capital, Startup Sherpas, Vaishav Investments and angel investors
DUSQ was originally launched as InnerGize in 2023 but later rebranded to signify pivot toward sleep regulation
The startup will offer stick-on wearables that provide vagus nerve stimulation for better sleep, along with smart sensors for sleep tracking
Sleep-focussed wearables startup DUSQ, formerly known as InnerGize, has raised ₹24 Cr (around $2.6 Mn) in a seed funding round led by Fireside Ventures, with participation from Antler India, Climber Capital, Startup Sherpas, Vaishav Investments, CaratLane cofounder Avnish Anand and Cipla Health CEO Shivam Puri.
The Delhi NCR-based startup is building proprietary technology for wearables that focus on sleep regulation rather than monitoring. DUSQ plans to use the funds to scale its “sleep regulation platform” by expanding its neuroscience and hardware teams, develop IPs, strengthen its in-house “sleep laboratory” while preparing to launch in the US market.
The startup initially launched as InnerGize with a focus on addressing mental health challenges through managing stress. It raised ₹6.5 Cr in its pre-seed round in April last year. InnerGize offered stick-on wearables for instant stress removal through vagus nerve stimulation, which is a major communication pathway between the brain and other organs, controlling functions ranging from digestion to heart rate and mood.
However, it decided to step back after the fundraise to focus on research and development, realising along the way that sleep was the primary cause for the stress it was trying to solve. This led to a rebranding and pivot toward sleep regulation with the launch of DUSQ to fill a critical gap in sleep optimisation, as current offerings merely focus on tracking sleep without any solutions to improve it, cofounder Shalmali Kadu told Inc42.
The startup said it garnered millions of psychological data points through InnerGize, which it utilised to formulate a regulation model that found a connection between signals from the autonomic nervous system and neural downshifting to fragmented recovery from sleep.
“We believe the next frontier of healthtech is not more data – it’s restored biological function. We’re not building another tracker; we’re building infrastructure for human recovery. This funding allows us to take an India-built deep-science product into global markets with confidence,” DUSQ cofounder Siddhant Bhargava said.
Similar to InnerGize, DUSQ will provide adhesive wearables that need to be applied behind the ear for vagus nerve stimulation to reduce stress before sleeping. Additionally, the product will feature smart sensors that will gauge data points to optimise sleep and track recovery.
The startup is planning to launch its products in the US around March. They will be made available in other countries, including India, at a later date.
Sleep technology has been focussed mainly on mattresses in Indiawith many new-age brands like Sleep Company and Wakefit raising funding over the past few years. However, the industry has since evolved to offer solutions like melatonin tablets that aid sleep, ayurvedic and aromatherapy solutions to calm the senses, and now, wearables have also entered the space.
The wearables market in India is itself expected to balloon, expanding from data-focussed smart watches and rings to solution-led products like Eternal founder Deepinder Goyal’s Temple, which aims to optimise the brain’s oxygen levelsand NeoSapien, which recently bagged $2 Mn in funding to launch an AI-powered wearable focussed on improving mental health and decision making.
Comments are closed.