Remster

Remster is an Indian sleep-technology startup founded in 2024 by Sumukha Nadig and Shubham Gupta while both were students at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai.²¹³ The company makes a smart bed-cover that uses water circulation to regulate bed temperature, with an on-device machine learning model that adjusts thermal output based on sensor data collected while the user sleeps.¹ Remster was incorporated as NidraTech before rebranding in 2025; the name is derived from "REM," the rapid eye movement stage of sleep associated with dreaming and cognitive consolidation.⁹

Product

Remster's product is a fitted cover that lays over an existing mattress. A bedside console circulates water through channels woven into the cover, cooling or heating each side of the bed independently in what the company calls dual-zone control.¹ The system's underlying rationale draws on research by Moyen et al. published in Bioengineering in 2024, which found that cooler mattress temperature produced a 22% increase in deep sleep in male participants in the first half of the night.¹²

The product incorporates what Remster calls SleepIntelligence™ — a three-step loop of sensing, processing, and actuation. Sensors embedded in the cover capture five biomarkers including heart rate, breathing rate, movement, skin temperature, and sleep stage. An on-device ML model learns individual user patterns over time, adjusting thermal output without requiring manual input each night.¹ A companion smartphone app surfaces sleep stage data, heart rate variability, and recovery trends.¹ A separate feature called RiseWise™ provides a gradual warm-temperature awakening sequence as an alternative to an audible alarm, drawing on research showing that body temperature naturally rises to signal wakefulness.¹

Remster targets what the founders call "sleep fitness" — positioning sleep not as passive recovery but as an active performance variable for business leaders and high performers. This framing is distinct from the wellness positioning common to competitors like Eight Sleep (which focuses on athletes and biohackers) and connects the product to productivity rather than health.¹¹⁶

Energy and climate context

From the outset the founders framed the product around India's electricity consumption challenge as much as personal health. In January 2025, when NidraTech was invited to showcase at the IIT Madras Research Park (IITMRP) under the sustainability theme "Ground Zero for Net-Zero," the pitch line was: "NidraTech's bed cover helps you sleep comfortably without needing an AC, even at 42°C."¹⁴ At that event the founders claimed the product consumes only one-third the power of a typical room air conditioner — a claim they repeated in public pitches throughout 2025 and that is self-reported rather than independently verified.¹⁴ The event also allowed them to interact with Sonam Wangchuk, the Ladakhi engineer and climate activist known for ice stupa water conservation work, from whom the founders said they learned during the day.¹⁴

India is among the world's largest markets for room air conditioners, with penetration growing rapidly as summer temperatures rise; analysts have noted that residential cooling represents a rapidly expanding share of national electricity load. Remster's pitch — targeted thermal comfort at the bed rather than conditioning an entire room — sits at the intersection of energy efficiency and personal health, a positioning the founders have returned to repeatedly in investor and institutional meetings.¹⁴¹⁶

IIT Madras incubation

Remster was built inside multiple overlapping IIT Madras ecosystems simultaneously. Shubham Gupta completed a DST NIDHI PRAYAS project at the HTIC MedTech Incubator on campus — a completion confirmed by a post from the incubator's own LinkedIn account.⁶ NIDHI PRAYAS is a Department of Science and Technology scheme that funds hardware prototype development with grants of up to ₹10 lakhs per innovator; recipient startups must remain enrolled in an approved incubation program for up to 18 months.⁵ Sumukha Nadig separately announced that Remster won the NIDHI PRAYAS grant from the same HTIC MedTech Incubator, at an event in November 2025.⁸

The company also worked through NIRMAAN, IIT Madras's student pre-incubation body, and the institute's Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which facilitated access to institutional events and senior figures.¹¹¹⁰

Building the product by hand

The iterative hardware build process at Remster has been notably hands-on. The first MVP debuted in January 2025 at the IITMRP "Ground Zero for Net-Zero" event and immediately generated pre-orders.¹⁴ By April 2025 the team was already building the second generation inside the IIT Madras campus: Gupta assembled the console unit, Nadig wired the electrical harness, and a team member named Kaushik wrote the firmware.¹⁵ Nadig described the process publicly: "Many founders hesitate to get their hands dirty in doing the small tasks. Hiring technicians for it is an easy way out. But especially in a hard-tech startup, there's a lot to learn while building. From the way a button should be placed, to the brightness of a display."¹⁵

By September 2025, the team had logged more than 1,000 hours of real-life user testing of the bed cover across summer, monsoon, and air-conditioned environments to calibrate the ML stack against varying conditions — summer day heat, rainy day humidity, person-to-person preferences, and the interaction with ambient air conditioning.⁷ Kaushal Harish led ML testing efforts during this phase alongside Gupta.⁷

In February 2026 Nadig announced that the team was building a new custom PCB board entirely in-house, from the circuit design up.¹⁷ The rationale was hardware-product independence: an in-house board would enable over-the-air firmware updates and an intelligent alarm system, neither of which the MVP-era hardware supported.¹⁷ Nadig acknowledged openly that the board "will probably break a few times before it works" and framed iterative failure as a core part of the process.¹⁷

Team

Beyond the two co-founders, Remster has added at least two early engineering hires. Kaustubh Titare, who lists IIT Madras as his education, is listed as Founding Engineer on his LinkedIn profile.² Kaushal Harish contributed to the real-life testing programme and ML stack development in mid-2025.⁷ A team member referred to as Kaushik handled firmware for the second product iteration.¹⁵

Institutional and strategic encounters

In July 2025, at the IIT Madras convocation ceremony, the founders demonstrated Remster to National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval, who attended as the chief guest. Nadig described the session: "Shubham and I discussed Remster's innovative sleep technology in detail. The value of building a full-stack tech product in India was emphasised, while we explained the co-relation between sleep and body temperature."¹¹ The presentation was arranged through NIRMAAN and the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship; IIT Madras Director Prof. Kamakoti Veezhinathan was also present.¹¹

Later that summer, both founders attended Sangam 2025, the flagship alumni event of the IIT Madras Alumni Association. There they pitched Remster directly to Prof. Kamakoti Veezhinathan, the institute director.¹⁶ An informal conversation with Prashant Pitti, CEO of EaseMyTrip, produced user-perspective product feedback; Tarun Mehta, CEO of Ather Energy, offered his experience building a direct-to-consumer brand in India.¹⁶ Gupta wrote: "It actually hit us how resourceful the IITM Alumni ecosystem really is."¹⁶

Relocation and market context

In December 2025, Remster moved its headquarters to Bengaluru from its original Chennai base.¹⁰ Nadig credited early backers and the IIT Madras ecosystem — specifically NIRMAAN, HTIC, and individuals including Nandhini K S, Mohana Priya, and Shreyas Belur — in announcing the move, alongside mentors Vivek Sarda, Akash Anand, and Himanshu Verma.¹⁰

The startup directory YNOS lists the entity under its former legal name NidraTech, incorporated in Chennai in 2024.¹³ Remster operates in the temperature-regulated sleep product segment where Eight Sleep (New York) and Sleepme's Dock Pro are the dominant international offerings. Eight Sleep has raised more than $220 million and prices its Pod units between $2,500 and $5,000 plus a monthly subscription; Sleepme similarly serves a premium Western market. Neither has a significant retail presence in India. Remster has not disclosed funding rounds as of this writing; all product metrics cited publicly come from founder LinkedIn posts and the company's website.⁷¹

References

1. Remster — Peak performance starts the night before(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
2. Remster | LinkedIn company page(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
3. Sumukha Nadig | LinkedIn profile(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
4. Shubham Gupta | LinkedIn profile(accessed Apr 22, 2026)
5. NIDHI PRAYAS — HTIC MedTech Incubator, IIT Madras