DUSQ: the Indian sleeptech that outsold Ultrahuman's own Kickstarter debut.

DUSQ was founded in 2023 by Dr. Siddhant Bhargava, Shalmali Kadu, and Mitansh Khurana, built on a simple but stubborn hypothesis: sleep tech had spent a decade telling people what happened the night before, without changing how anyone actually slept. Rather than compete in the tracker category occupied by Oura, Whoop, and Garmin, the team built the world's first closed-loop sleep regulation system — a 12-gram, behind-the-ear device that reads the autonomic nervous system in real time and delivers adaptive nerve stimulation the moment sleep is disrupted, guiding the body back into deeper sleep before the sleeper even notices something went wrong.

"The first wave of sleep tech gave people more data to look at without changing how anyone slept. The next wave will be defined by real intervention instead of more insight. DUSQ is building to lead that shift." — Fireside Ventures

A category built from scratch in India

The science behind that claim was built entirely in-house, out of DUSQ's own sleep lab, which has collected more than 50 million physiological data points. The company has completed one clinical trial with a second underway, holds CDSCO certification in India, and deploys an FDA-cleared stimulation modality for insomnia — with double-blind results showing 31% more deep sleep, a 38% improvement in heart rate variability, and 22% fewer night awakenings. "We did not enter a category. We built one. From India," says Dr. Siddhant Bhargava, co-founder and CEO. Off the back of a three-Shark deal on Shark Tank India and more than 2,000 first-generation users domestically, DUSQ launched on Kickstarter in the US on June 9, 2026, and crossed $1 million within days — surpassing every previous Indian healthtech company on the platform, including Ultrahuman's original Ring campaign. A seed round of roughly $3 million, led by Fireside Ventures with participation from Antler India and Climber Capital, is backing the next phase.

From no US pipeline to 150 early adopters

Before Embark, DUSQ had no real US pipeline — the Kickstarter traction was fresh and largely untested beyond initial demand. Since then, the company has shortlisted 150 early US adopters as it builds toward a broader retail launch, though that traction is still marked as "soon" rather than fully landed, and no additional funding has come through yet.

Dr. Siddhant, Co-founder, DUSQ: "I'm a doctor by training — my previous startup wasn't venture-backed, so my level of connections in this world was practically zero. Being here has probably been the best thing I've done all year. Embark started off as just an idea to us — that we'd come, explore, see what happens. But the thing that helped me most was actually changing my mindset — a lot of the fundamentals I believed about the US market shifted in just two weeks. And practically, we met around 50 people in that time, which is basically unheard of. The team made all of that happen so seamlessly."

With a Kickstarter record behind it, a US retail launch planned for September, and 150 early adopters already lined up, DUSQ is betting that a science-first, India-built device can hold its own in one of the most saturated consumer health markets in the world.

‍