MUSICAL NOTES
Mathew Joseph, CEO and Co-founder of Sleepyhead, enjoys playing the keyboard and composing his own music
For 38-year-old Mathew Joseph, CEO and Co-founder of Sleepyhead— an online-only home lifestyle brand, music has been a part of his life since childhood. “I started playing the piano when I was five and later moved to the keyboard,” says Joseph, who was introduced to everything from western classical to Indian classical and heavy metal by his parents who loved music. So which is his favourite genre? “It doesn’t exist. It depends totally on my mood.” Joseph goes from playing soft western classical such as compositions by Beethoven to heavy metal such as music by Ozzy Osbourne depending upon how he is feeling. “The keyboard is quite versatile to bring any form of music to life,” he says. While he was trained to play the piano as a child in boarding school in Ooty, he now plays music by the ear and composes his own music as well. “Over the years, how we compose music has evolved. About two decades ago there weren’t many kinds of software that helped you compose music. Today there are several such software to edit tracks and compose music. So now it’s no longer just about playing music but also understanding the software,” says Joseph who has composed electronic dance music (EDM) tracks. Joseph played with two different bands when he was at Christ College in Bengaluru. “I focussed on multiple genres and even played Indian fusion music.” Joseph is now trying to introduce his young daughter to music, just like his parents introduced him. Sleepyhead is a subsidiary of Duroflex. It is a five-year-old brand and crossed `200 crore in revenue this year. Joseph says that when you are an e-commerce-only brand, you have to be careful that products are logistics-friendly. Sleepyhead started with mattresses and then ventured into furnishings and furniture. “It is a value-for-money brand. Since we don’t have an offline presence, we save on various costs that are passed on to our customers,” says Joseph. Sleepyhead is a younger, more vibrant brand than Duroflex and targets a different set of customers. Joseph says Bengaluru is currently its biggest market since the city has a young IT crowd which is setting up homes.
Bengaluru-headquartered NoBroker is a real estate renting and buying platform What was the problem you were grappling with?
When I was looking to quit my job to start a venture, my mother was very apprehensive about it. She questioned my decision, as leaving a dream job at Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) to start up something of my own was a giant leap of faith and not without its risks.
Whom did you approach for advice?
I approached my father as he has been my first role model and mentor. He’s my first point of contact whenever I have doubts.
What was the advice you received?
My father gave me two pieces of advice: First, create something that solves a pain point for the customer; and second, the opportunity should be large enough so that the returns should compensate for the risks that you are taking. In his non-management commonsensical way, he told me about positioning and market size.
How effective was it in resolving the problem?
Solving customer pain points has been our motto at NoBroker. Whatever services and verticals that we have ventured into can be attributed to that one thought. To this day, whenever I take calls that involve risks, I use those two pieces of advice and try to understand if the product or the service that we’re creating would justify the risk involved.