JOIN USA Harvard Business School alumna, Naiyya Saggi was always passionate about maternal, child health and education. Two years ago, when Naiyya was looking to start her own venture, she realised that there were no trusted or reliable sites for moms-to-be or new moms to discuss about their issues, seek experts' opinion, look out for services, and read articles exclusively written for them.
Understanding the need and the potential of parenting startup industry, (both products and services market is estimated to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of around 17% to reach $26.2 billion by 2017 in India) Naiyya founded BabyChakra, a parenting platform that connects parents to services and products.
The startup, which has secured Series A funding from Round Glass Partners (Seattle) and seed funding from Mumbai Angels, Patni Family Office and Singapore Angel Network, connects over five lakh young parents on a monthly basis. It aims to have two million monthly users, and to capture at least 80% of parents online.
It has onboarded 100 experts, and of them 40 are active and answer to mothers’ queries. “We closed last month with one million users. Through our platform, one can follow other mothers, book services, and do shopping, among others,” says Naiyya, who was in Bengaluru recently to launch BabyChakra in the city.
Though the startup had many users before the official launch, there were no products and services exclusively for parents in Bengaluru. “But now, they can look forward to buy products on our platform, besides being able to book services across categories like - prenatal, lactation, photography, catering, event managers, cakes and confectioneries,” the young founder says.
It is one of the companies based on the social commerce model which allows the purchase of products and services in the same cart.
Available in both versions — desktop and mobile, BabyChakra has built in three-levels of checking. “One has to go through all the levels of checking before becoming the user. We also have something called ‘Mom Stars’, who have the right to block the users. We also conduct an offline programme called ‘Mom Stars meetups’ which is quite popular, where expecting mothers and new moms meet up to exchange idea and meet other moms,” she says. Almost 40% of BabyChakra users are from Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru. Naiyya, who heads a 45-member team, wants to take the platform globally, as she feels there is a universal need for such platform. While close to 90% of its users are mothers, it is also seeing good participation from fathers.
On monetisation, Naiyya says, “Our services are based on a commission-space model. If we sell any service, we earn commission.”