By M Muneer, Fortune-500 advisor, start-up investor, and co-founder of Medici Institute for Innovation
Sleep, that primitive biological habit, has become an inconvenient luxury for the average Indian executive. Why waste eight glorious hours unconscious when you can burn your brain, finish that pending project, binge on Netflix at 2 am, and proudly tell the world that you “function perfectly on four hours”? In the boardrooms of India Inc, sleeplessness is not a problem, just a professional flex.
Sleep was once considered a biological necessity. Today, it is treated as a weakness, a luxury for the unambitious, a flaw in the LinkedIn grindset. But medical science is not amused. Sleep deprivation is quietly hollowing out public health, productivity, and sanity across India. The numbers are sobering. The Indian Council of Medical Research reports nearly 1 out of 5 Indians suffer from sleep disorders. A Wakefit survey found that 55% of urban Indians survive on less than six hours of sleep.
Globally, things are no better. The WHO says up to 45% of the world is sleep-deprived. The US, Japan, and South Korea are leading this sleepless parade. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has even declared sleep deprivation a public health epidemic.
How did we get here? Blame it on a perfect storm of digital addiction, workaholism, financial stress, and urban chaos.
OTT platforms have birthed the glorious Indian tradition of “revenge bedtime procrastination”. Tired employees, bullied by meetings all day, stay awake till midnight binge-watching crime thrillers, convinced that sacrificing sleep is an act of personal freedom. Bosses glorify insomnia as leadership virtue, praising the manager who sends emails at 3 am instead of the one who actually sleeps and thinks clearly.
In India Inc, exhaustion is equated with excellence. If you look well-rested, you are suspicious. If you look wrecked, you are “committed”. But sleep deprivation is not a harmless quirk. It is a slow, invisible assassination of the human brain.
Cognitively, sleepless executives make worse decisions, forget key details, and lose creative sharpness. Chronic sleep loss is also linked to early dementia and Alzheimer’s.
Cardiovascular health takes a beating too. The Lancet studies show that lack of sleep increases the risk of hypertension, heart attacks, and strokes. India Inc may be obsessed with QSQT (Quarter Se Quarter Tak), but it is ignoring quarterly blood pressure spikes.
Sleeplessness sabotages weight and sugar control. Executives running on black coffee and fried snacks are basically fast-tracking themselves to diabetes. As for mental health, well, it spirals downward—insomnia feeds anxiety and depression in a vicious loop.
The economic damage too is staggering. RAND Europe estimates India loses $84 billion annually due to lost productivity from sleep deprivation. Workplaces suffer from twin evils: absenteeism and presenteeism. The first is when people call in sick. The second, far worse, is when they show up half-dead, make terrible mistakes, snap at colleagues, and pretend they are “crushing it”. The Indian Sleep Research Society found over 60% of professionals are chronically fatigued.
Sleep deprivation is corroding society itself. Drowsy driving contributes to over 20% of highway accidents in India. Teenagers, modelled on sleepless parents, are growing anxious, distracted, and academically unstable. Families are fracturing under stress. Hospitals are bracing for an avalanche of lifestyle diseases.
So what is the solution? First, India Inc must stop worshipping insomnia like a badge of honour. Companies need sleep-positive cultures—flexible hours, mental health days, and no emails after 10 pm. If Japanese firms can introduce nap rooms, surely Indian tech parks can do better than bean bags and Instagram walls.
Schools must teach sleep hygiene as seriously as maths. Doctors must push for sleep treatment. Tech firms must design apps that don’t manipulate dopamine like casino slot machines. In a country that worships work, it is time to worship rest. Because a sleepless nation is not a productive one. India Inc must decide: does it want brilliant, clear-headed leaders, or exhausted zombies in tailored suits? Excellence begins not in the boardroom but in the bedroom, with eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.