Priyanka Sahay
Moneycontrol Bureau
From real time alerts about the status of their children to receiving updates from teachers at school, Mumbai-based technology startup eRaksha acts as a bridge between teacher and parents to monitor the overall development of children.
The startup which is run by Cartel Solution is a business to business (B2B) platform and offers its solutions to over 15 schools covering 15,000 students across Maharashtra.
It charges the schools Rs 100 per year for a student.
The app is a good resource for working parents as often it’s tough for them to track the activities of their child due to their busy schedules.
When the student comes to school he/she can tap the card on the bio-metric device allowing the parents to get a real time app notification of his/her arrival. The device also clicks the picture of the student while punching the card.
It further allows teachers to upload homework or messages straight on the app, instead of writing individually in every student's diary. Parents can also apply for leave on the app itself.
The company is also integrating video conferencing in the app. It currently offers content in English and also plans to go vernacular by adding Marathi and Hindi to its platform soon.
"The vision was to remove the concept of diaries from the school, replacing it with a tab and a mobile app," said Rohit Prashar, co-founder of eRaksha.
As of now the company earns through a subscription channel; it plans to monetise through in-app advertisements as well.
The app has a holiday page which is visited by parents while planning vacations. The startup aims to reach out to online travel agencies that can have holiday packages offered to parents. It will also target local coaching institutes for advertisements.
eRaksha was founded in 2014 by Rajeev Verma, Nitish Pandey, Mayur Navandar along with Prashar and Hitesh Chandak. The company has till now been boot-strapped and it now plans to raise Rs 1 crore for country-wide expansion.
"The money will be invested in advertisement. We just need to reach out to more people," said Hitesh Chandak adding that the product is up and running and the money is largely required to promote it.
There has been a considerable growth in the popularity of tracking apps among consumers as well as investors in the last one year, given the rapid increase in crime rates – especially of children being involved in violent activities.
Prashar says, due to the app there have been significant decrease in students bunking schools.
According to data tracker, Tracxn the country currently has 28 startups running tracking business in India. Out of these, seven are children focused.
The sector which received barely USD 10,000 in investment in 2015 has raised USD 750,000 in 2016 overall, as per Tracxn.
eRaksha is likely to lock horns with Uolo Technology that raised USD 210,000 from Purvi Ventures and angel investors Rajul Garg among others. Other startups in the segment include names like eKAVACH and KidMobile. Follow @priyankasahay
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