These startups ease the many challenges that come with parenting
From tips on parenting for new parents to babycare products, these startups are here to save the day.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, but more and more, nuclear families have become the norm in urban areas. Childcare is still not evolved at workplaces, and with people moving around so much, they are unable to enlist the help of grandparents and other relatives living nearby.
Seeing the challenges in parenting in the new age, various startups have come up with solutions to help them along the often tricky journey of bringing up a child. The Indian maternity and babycare products market has been witnessing tremendous growth in the last few years, in comparison to other emerging markets across the world. Let’s have a look at some startups helping parents in India.
Parenting advice
Tiny step: Tinystep, which was launched in 2015, provides parenting-related information and advice to a network of parents. The network consists of people in the pregnancy, baby and toddler stages of parenthood. Founded by Suhail Abidi, Bengaluru-based Tinystep has raised $2 million in pre-Series A funding from Flipkart in 2016. The app monitors every stage, from ovulation calculations for pregnancy to the status of pregnancy, regularly, and captures milestones like first step, first tooth, first words etc.
Parentune: Parentune is an online community of parents for real-time advice and support. Its site is available on desktop and mobile, and it also has an app. It was founded by Nitin Pandey in November 2012. Each parent on Parentune is verified, and has real-time access to personalised content and support relevant to her or his child's age, and their concerns. Though generally free, it also requires nominal fees in case of consultancy. Besides India, the network also has parents from the UAE, the UK, Singapore and the US. This Gurgaon-based startup has raised an undisclosed amount in two rounds of funding from Kae Capital and SEGNEL Ventures.
ZenParent: Founded by Supriya Hiremagalur and Vinay Rao, this startup provides parenting advice such as medical issues, nutrition, fitness and psychology. It publishes articles too on various topics such as child development, parenting and childcare tips. Started in 2014, ZenParent has raised $500,000 in seed funding from i2india Ventures. Bengaluru-based ZenParent has experts who are all mothers across different ages. ZenParent has a portal and app through which the parents can interact with the experts and the team.
Baby products
Little Wings: Founded in 2016 by Puja Karambelkar and Priya Kathpal, LittleWings manufactures handmade products for babies, such as ring slings, traditional quilts, backpacks and wraps. They design and manufacture woven clothes at a small charitable handloom centre. A large part of the proceeds from the orders are used as a sponsorship fee to educate the young aspiring weavers that work on their project designs, apart from getting to practice their skills. This Mumbai-based startup uses baby-safe colours for its products.
Mamaearth: Delhi-based mother and childcare products company Honasa Consumer’s brand Mamaearth offers over 20 products for babies and mothers. Mamaearth, founded by Varun and Ghazal Alagh, focuses on safe, toxin-free, international standard products. The company has been funded by actor Kanwaljit Singh, Fireside Ventures, and other investors. Bollywood celebrity Shilpa Shetty Kundra has come on board as an equity investor. It has its presence online and offline.
Healthcare
My Child App: Launched in 2015, the app helps parents screen disorders that are normally detected in children of age 1 month to 24 months. My Child App is founded by college dropouts Harsh Songra, Aafreen Ansari, and Shreya Srivastava. My Child App has raised funding of $100,000 led by 500Startups from angel investors like Samir Bangara, Anisha Mittal, Amit Gupta, Pallav Nadhani, Singapore Angel Network etc. The startup is based in Bhopal.