Working with established baby brands such as Johnson and Johnson, MamyPoko, Babyoye, Unilever, and seventeen thousand service providers, BabyChakra offers arguably the best support for young parents and potential parents in India.
It is currently present in Mumbai, Bangalore, and Dehli but the founder hopes to soon expand into the foreign market.
Founded in 2015 by Naiyya Saggi, the platform aims to help young parents get the best advice and care possible for their children, from conception, to pregnancy, to delivering their child.
The topics related to parenting are often avoided in India, which leads to a dangerous lack of information for young parents.
“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,” Saggi told Moneycontrol in an interview.
The startup has 5 lakh [500,000] young parents in their service and are working to increase that number to 2 million by the end of the year. The parenting industry is expected to grow seventeen percent year-on-year, and it is predicted to be worth $26.2 billion by the end of this year.
“There are people in India who feel shy to talk about it even with their parents and that’s the segment we were tapping into”, Saggi said.
The BabyChakra app allows users to ask questions anonymously, which are then answered by a team of experts, as well as other parents. As Naiyya says “Parenting is a journey and sometimes people don’t even know what questions to ask.”
The platform is designed to intelligently predict resources and recommendations based on the user’s needs. But the collection of this data proved difficult for Saggi, at first. “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 said.
But it appears that the early “teething problems” have since been overcome, and the startup has evolved from a simple assistance app to a full-blown website with many resources to offer.
For couples trying to conceive, BabyChakra offer an information session to discuss what happens during pregnancy to ease any worries potential parents – particularly mothers – may have.
For pregnant mothers, the app offers access to prenatal yoga classes either at home or with other expectant mothers. The idea being to not only promote health, but also to promote interaction between soon-to-be parents to share advice and tips, making them feel less alone, and could lead to making some friends.
Finally, the post-delivery stage offers many different options, but there are two in particular that stick out. First, there are lactation consultation sessions. These can either be done at home, at a clinic, or even by Skype and are undertaken by qualified doctors specializing in postnatal issues.
The second, and perhaps one of the most important, is the service that helps new mums deal with postpartum depression. These are four classes, done as home visits, that last ninety minutes each. The one-on-one support guides mothers through the possible hormonal side effects that can cause life-threatening depression after giving birth.
The app offers many more services but there are too many to list them all. The ones mentioned above are just the tip of the pregnancy bump. But in addition to services, BabyChakra also offer products such as book libraries for infants and car seats for your child to travel safely.
