How Start-ups are Helping Parents Raise their Babies From selling baby products online to building communities of mothers, start-ups are at the aid of parents

For every new mother, motherhood is a beautiful but stressful journey. From researching from day 1 about the various aspects of pregnancy to learning new things from friends and family at every step, they are constantly looking out for advice and help.

Start-ups held out a lending hand for these moms and mom-to-be's by helping them raise their children with better insights and also connecting them with moms from across the world to share their problems and opinions with.

Born out of Experience

For Tamanna Dhamija, Co-Founder & Mommy in Chief, Babydestination.com, her start-up was born out of the problems she faced during her pregnancy. Researching online and conflicting reviews added to the confusion. And that is when she got thinking - in an age where technology is present in every part of our lives, why was it that there was no platform that connected moms to create a community to recommend and discover the best products for their children?

"We conceptualized Baby Destination based on the issues I personally faced as a first time mom and the power I felt in the collective wisdom of moms. I foresaw a huge opportunity to create impact in this space, given the lack of credible parenting information around us," said Dhamija. She believed in the idea so much that she and her husband decided to quit their longstanding, successful corporate financial careers in New York and moved to India.

The Need for Baby Tech Start-ups

One would wonder that why do we really need start-ups to help mothers raise their babies as for generations together mothers have been dependent on friends and family or their own instincts. Dhamija rightly points out that owing to urbanization and digitization, the parenting scenario in India has witnessed a paradigm shift in recent years, where new mothers are becoming socially connected and want to consume credible advice on parenting online.

"Parents nowadays require access to accurate parenting information and resources depending on their child's life stage, and this is exactly where start ups like Baby Destination have stepped in, and is adding value with online micro communities, social media engagement, video parenting, offline mom and kids events, and so on," she said. They have built a network of 4 million moms on Facebook, and engage with more than 4000 active moms on WhatsApp to create a peer-to-peer digital community. Baby Destination has also proven tech leadership in the domain by launching the first-of-its-kind parenting chabot in India, which provides automated content to users. One of the closed FB groups launched July last year already has more than 80,000 highly engaged moms conversing every day.

Mallika Sadani, founder of The Moms Co, agrees that the market opportunity lies in the curiosity of the mothers. "They are constantly seeking for answers. With a smartphone in her hand, she is also a more independent thinker and decision maker," said Sadani.

With mother constantly on the lookout for better and safer products for their children, it gives start-ups the opportunity to constantly be in touch and add value to her life. "We help them beyond the products (informative blogs etc.) so much so that we give her to truly become an integral part of her motherhood journey," said Sadani.

Spoilt for Choices?

But the same curiosity and market opportunity also means they face a stiff competition. With so many sources of information, Sadani believes that it is even more crucial for every start-up to make sure that their brand stands apart and what they have to say actually leave an impression on the mother.

In the maternity management space or sector in particular, there's a huge target audience to cater to. There are an estimated 25 million+ women in the age group of 22-35 from India on Facebook who are part of the potential target segment said Dhamija. But there's also competition. Dhamija said that the trick lies in finding their own individuality amidst the crowd. "There are a number of players competing with us in the parenting space such as Baby Chakra, Baby Center, MyCity4Kids, etc, but none of these are probably solving the dual dilemma of both personalized information and product discovery, as the baby grows. But Baby Destination is trying to do just this help of data and intelligence driven framework," said Dhamija.