Jai Sharma Built Demand for a Brain-Training Headset Without Spending on Ads

There is no easy search term for a product most people do not know exists. That was the challenge facing Jai Sharma, co-founder and CMO of Mave Health, as he worked to bring a brain-training headset to market. Mave was not entering a category where shoppers were already comparing brands, reading reviews, or waiting for a discount code. Sharma had to do something harder. He had to make people understand why the category should matter in the first place.

Mave Health makes a headset for at-home brain training. Sharma's job was not only to introduce the device but also to help people understand why a product like this could fit into their daily lives. Users may come in with curiosity, skepticism, or no prior knowledge at all. His work begins before the sale, when a person is still deciding whether the idea itself makes sense.

That path did not begin with paid ads.

Every customer Mave acquired came without a single dollar of paid advertising. No ad budget. No performance marketing spend. No attempt to buy attention in a crowded feed. Instead, Sharma built the demand engine through new media, especially viral video drops on X.

"When nobody is searching for what you sell, your first job is not conversion," Sharma says. "Your first job is belief."

That belief is difficult to build when the product does not fit neatly into a category people already understand. A person may know what a smart ring does. They may understand a sleep tracker or a meditation app. A brain-training headset asks for a different kind of attention. Before someone wants it, they have to understand the problem it addresses and why a physical device could be part of the answer.

Sharma saw early that the usual performance marketing playbook would not carry enough weight. Paid ads can amplify a message once the market has language for the product. They cannot replace the work of making the unfamiliar feel understandable, credible, and relevant. For Mave, the first impression had to do more than attract a click. It had to help people make sense of something they were not already looking for.

"In a new category, creative is not the wrapper," Sharma says. "For most people, it is the first time they experience the product."

That idea has shaped how he thinks about growth. Sharma treats creative as part of the product itself, not an accessory added after the fact. The videos, explanations, hooks, demonstrations, and posts are not simply marketing material. They are the earliest version of the user journey. They teach people how to frame the problem and what kind of result to imagine.

For Mave, that meant translating an unfamiliar idea into a felt need. The product uses gentle, non-invasive electrical stimulation, known as tDCS, and is designed for focus, stress regulation, and decision-making. That explanation matters, but Sharma believes the customer rarely starts there. The customer starts with a more immediate feeling: scattered attention, stress, decision fatigue, or the sense that another app is not going to change the underlying pattern.

"People do not wake up wanting tDCS," Sharma says. "They want to stop feeling scattered by 3 p.m. They want to feel more regulated. They want a tool that helps them get through the day differently."

That focus on the felt result comes from Sharma's wider philosophy of demand creation. New categories are not built by leading with features. They are built by helping the user recognize a problem in their own life, then giving that person a new explanation for how it might be solved. In Mave's case, the message had to be clear enough for a skeptical audience, but grounded enough not to sound like hype.

Sharma had learned a version of that lesson before. He studied at BITS Pilani and built his career in growth marketing for early-stage startups. At Newton School, a $30 million-funded Series B startup, he led growth for an education model that required people to bet their careers on a new path. Early customers were not only buying a product. They were buying a new explanation of what might be possible for them.

That experience became a training ground for Mave.

"At Newton School, I learned that the market does not always know what to ask for yet," Sharma says. "Sometimes you have to build the language before you can build the demand."

Mave raised the difficulty level. It was hardware, which meant manufacturing, trust, habit formation, and a longer road from first interest to daily use. It was also being built out of India for a global audience, including the US. Sharma knew that came with an extra burden. Serious neurotech is often assumed to come from places like Boston or San Francisco. Building from India meant the creative had to be sharper, the proof had to be clearer, and the story had to travel.

"Every constraint forced more discipline," Sharma says. "We had to earn attention, earn trust, and make the product understandable without depending on the usual shortcuts."

The results gave the strategy weight. Mave has shipped to hundreds of active users, raised about $2.85 million in funding, and expanded into the US market. Sharma was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia list, and early-stage hardware founders now come to him for advice on launching products to a global audience.

He does not view that recognition as a sign that category creation is glamorous. Much of the work is unglamorous: diagnosing why people do not understand the product, testing what helps them believe, correcting the message when it fails, and moving quickly enough to learn before momentum disappears.

"Data tells you what is happening," Sharma says. "It does not always tell you why. In a category built on trust, authenticity often beats polish because people can feel when something is trying too hard."

That lesson has shaped his view of new-media growth. Viral content is not magic. It is a feedback loop. A piece of creative either makes the category clearer, or it does not. A video either earns enough curiosity for someone to keep watching, or it disappears. Sharma's job is to keep finding the language, proof, and emotional entry point that help people make sense of something they were not already searching for.

"In a mature category, you can compete for demand," he says. "In a new one, you have to create the conditions for demand to exist."

That is the playbook Sharma wants to keep building and sharing. His near-term focus is scaling Mave in the US while proving that consumer neurotech can become a real, repeatable business. Longer term, he wants Mave to become the default name people think of when they think of cognitive performance, the way other wearable brands have become linked with sleep or recovery.

For Jai Sharma, the harder lesson is bigger than one product launch. A new category is not born when a company ships a device. It begins when people finally have language for a problem they already feel and trust a new tool enough to try solving it.