Sabahat Contractor Moneycontrol News
The nearly 2000 square feet office on the third floor of Mumbai’s crowded Phoenix Mall is beaming with young executives frantically working on new projects to deal with the health of young mothers. Am in the office of BabyChakra, a startup that offers solutions to young parents on issues ranging from the health of the newly born and the mother beside baby care tips.
Founded in 2015, the company currently claims to have nearly 5 lakh young parents as users on a monthly basis on its platform and aims to grow to 2 million monthly users by the end of this year. The company offers services across three stages -- when a couple is trying to conceive, during pregnancy and post delivery.
The business is run by 32-year old Naiyaa Saggi who was earlier a management consultant with McKinsey. She pursued her business administration from Harvard Business School.
“I was really passionate about maternal and child health. So starting a venture seemed a natural course of things. We are building strong customer relationships across the parent community,” said Saggi in an interaction with Moneycontrol.
According to Saggi, the parenting space in India is very disorganised and not considered to be as glamorous as other venture backed sectors., “It is not considered as a sexy as food tech and other services where you are creating a product," she said.
The parenting startups industry- both products and services market is estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of around 17 percent to reach USD 26.2 billion by 2017 in India, according to the company.
Saggi got an exposure in the healthcare market early on in her career during McKinsey days that made her think about setting up her own venture.
But the journey was never smooth.
“It is very difficult to get the right set of data from the private space which can help in making quick data based decision,” she added.
When a child is born there is an ecosystem of care in India which is formed around the child and that was the reason behind choosing this name for the venture, she tells me.
Now the question was also whether people in India actually even needed a digital companion?
“There are people in India who feel shy to talk about it even with their parents and that’s the segment we were tapping in. We realized that an app was a safe haven for them,” she said.
BabyChakra app allows you to ask questions anonymously which are answered by the community of experts and other parents.
“Parenting is a journey and sometimes people don’t even know what questions to ask. So as a platform we have a data in advance which can predict resources to you and recommends that in the later stage which will be very useful,” she said.
The company offers handpicked, a curated range of products for maternity and childcare across clothing, nutrition, toys, and specialities.
It has also launched online ‘Milk Bank Platform- Mom Line where lactating mothers can be reached out to for children in need of breast milk.
The company has also tied up with multiple baby product brands and websites and generates revenue by providing a marketing platform to these companies such as including Johnson & Johnson, MamyPoko, Babyoye, and Unilever.
The company raised an undisclosed amount in a Series A round from Seattle-based Round-Glass Partners. Her company is currently present in Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi and now planning to expand in the foreign market.
sabahat.contractor@nw18.com
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