Baby products firm Cradlewise raises $7mn in seed round led by Footwork

The round also had significant participation from CRV and follow-on from existing investors SOSV and Better Capital

Cradlewise, a Silicon Valley-based baby technology company that makes smart cribs for babies, has raised a series seed round of $7 millon led by Footwork with significant participation from CRV and follow-on from existing investors SOSV and Better Capital. Other notable investors participating include Katrina Lake (founder of Stitch Fix), Jeremy Cai (CEO of Italic) and Dilip Goswani (CTO of Molekule). Sachin Oswal (Co-founder Infibeam) and Sonny Vu (ex-CEO of Misfit Wearables) have participated in previous rounds of funding.

The company maintains offices in both the San Francisco Bay Area, California and Bangalore, India. The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s innovation and technology roadmap and grow their team in India with hires in engineering, software, product, and customer success.

Cradlewise makes smart cribs with a built-in baby monitor that uses AI to learn the baby’s sleep patterns and adapts to changing needs. It’s a crib, bassinet, and monitor, all integrated into one. It’s a baby’s sleep companion from birth to 24 months old. The self-learning crib spots the first signs of wakeup of the baby and starts rocking automatically along with soothing music to safeguard sleep.

Co-founders Radhika and Bharath Patil invented Cradlewise to solve the sleep challenges they faced when their first child was born. They are inventors and have created tech that drives drones, robots, and smartphones for companies like Qualcomm and Texas Instruments.

Radhika Patil, Co-Founder of Cradlewise said, “We believe that Cradlewise is uniquely positioned in this competitive space as the only smart sleep product designed to impact an outcome and not just give notifications. We will continue to lead in this space by expanding the capabilities of the product in the areas of a baby’s health and safety.”

Nikhil Basu Trivedi, co-founder & General Partner at Footwork joins the board of this fast-growing startup in the $136 billion-plus childcare market. "Cradlewise is the only baby product in the market that uses deep tech and AI to learn the baby's sleep patterns and growth trends. With software updates that build on this rich data, a characteristic of the very best-connected hardware companies such as Nest, Peloton, Tesla, and Tonal, Cradlewise is pioneering the connected nursery," said Basu.

“Radhika and Bharath are stellar entrepreneurs who are solving an incredibly important problem - using modern tech and AI to help babies sleep better & longer and help parents have a far more fulfilling time with their babies”, said Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital, an early backer of breakout companies started by Indian founders including Khatabook, Teachmint, Open & others.

Cradlewise currently ships directly via cradlewise.com. Plans are also underway to expand availability through other e-commerce websites in 2022.