Cradlewise, AI startup that gives parents peace of mind with smart tech

How a couple got the idea for a smart crib that now has fans worldwide, including OpenAI chief Sam Altman

It is 2020. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic is spreading and the world is in tumult. In the middle of uncertainty, the Patils decide to move to the Bay Area in San Francisco, United States (US) from Bengaluru.

 

The couple boarded a long transatlantic flight to the US, having with them their two young children, four bags but no medical insurance. Radhika Patil and her husband Bharath are engineers, who five years later are being praised by artificial intelligence (AI) leaders like Sam Altman.

 

Radhika and Bharath are the founders of Cradlewise, an Indian startup which since being set up in 2018 has got fans across the world. The company makes a smart crib that uses data from a child's sleep cycles to gently rock it back to sleep. Cradlewise’s features include automatic soothing, AI-enabled sleep monitoring, sleep insights, and a baby monitor.

 

Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, said he will “definitely recommend” Cradlewise, praising it on X on April 14.

 

The couple got the idea for their company as an “aha” moment when they observed that their daughter, who slept in batches of 30 minutes but would do so uninterrupted for two hours if she was rocked as soon as she started stirring.

 

“That observation led us to wonder why there was no cradle or smart fiddle that could sense the signs of stirring and start rocking the cradle pre-emptively to help them go back to sleep. Just in time, soothing is everything when it comes to baby sleep,” Radhika told Business Standard in a video interview.

 

A Cradlewise crib predicts when a child can possibly wake up and it has a camera to study respirations per minute. The data is sent to sensors which study the information to form a personalised rocking rhythm for the child. “We wanted to use the data not just to give insights such as the baby is supposed to sleep 10 hours every night but it is getting only eight hours of sleep. That is more anxiety-inducing for the parents.”

 

The company has a manufacturing facility in Hinjewadi in Pune and employs nearly 125 people in India, including contract workers. After developing early versions of the smart crib in Bengaluru, the Patils moved to the US to explore a market where the “ability to spend disposable income on technology and acceptance was much higher”.

 

“In India, there is help. Thankfully, the kids have grandparents, extended family and all the support one can ask for and they all pitch in. We always wanted to develop a global brand and the US being such a large market made sense as a primary launch market,” said Radhika.

 

Cradlewise was launched in the US, but the couple aims to return to India as it has one of the largest upwardly mobile populations in the world. The company started selling its crib in India some 10 days ago and aims to introduce more economical options for price-sensitive domestic consumers.

 

The startup in 2021 raised $7 million in seed funding from Footwork, Alabaster, Better Capital and others, according to data from Tracxn. In 2019, Cradlewie was selected by HAX, a US-based pre-stage venture capital focused on hard technology startups.

 

Cradlewise sells only one product in India, priced at roughly ~1.5 lakh. Since early 2021, when sales started in the US, Cradlewise has seen its revenues double nearly every year. Radhika declined to share numbers.

 

“There is a cost to quality. We use all baby-safe materials certified to all US standards. We definitely will have variants for the Indian market. There is a need for mass-market access products. We will be developing that.”

 

The company is looking to get investments from venture capitalists to launch more products and build what it calls is ‘a connected kids’ room’.