 "Vishal Gupta, CEO, mycity4kids")
An online-content platform for children, mycity4kids, has raised $3 million from SIDBI Venture Capital Limited and YourNest Angel Fund. The platform helps multi-tasking mothers manage the task of modern-day parenting better. Based out of Gurgaon, the company was launched in October 2010, and aims to become an indispensable mobile platform for mothers.
The startup will utilise the funds for capital requirement for the next 24 months and has built the largest community of parents. It targets those mums whose kids are below 14 years of age and has 65,000 service providers in nine cities and offers parents access to over 4,000 parenting blogs of 500-plus bloggers and experts.
The platform has sharply mum-focused content which includes the largest hyper-local discovery platform for kid’s resources and events, as well as the largest community of mommy blogger and parenting experts, in the country. Around a million parents visit the website every month and it receives 2.5 million page views and has 700 bloggers and 75,000 service providers listed across nine cities.
“Our expansion plans, in this phase, are geared towards becoming a daily-use product for every mum. You will see several mobile-led initiatives in that direction, starting with the recent launch of the mycity4kids Family Organizer app," said Vishal Gupta, CEO of mycity4kids.
The app has a shared calendar and to-do list, which allows mothers to organise the kids schedule and enlist support from the spouse/support-system in daily parenting. The app also enables mothers to discover resources and events for kids in the city and to learn from the shared experiences of other parent and expert blogs. The company also plans a mother-specific group-chat platform, which is integrated with the calendar and to-do list.
Highlighting the intrinsic strength of this customer base, Sunil Goyal, CEO of YourNest Angel Fund said, “The size and value of the mum demographic is what made us invest in mycity4kids 3 years back." There are over 50 million mothers online in the country and the numbers are doubling every three years.
The company aims to have 5 million mothers use the platform every day in the next 18 months and also aims to achieve operational break-even in 12 months.
The company focuses on monetization through 3 distinct revenue streams which has amounted to Rs 4 crore in 2014-15. Of these the brand-sponsored blogging segment, is the fastest growing and contributes to 45% of its revenue, with an impressive client-list that includes Kellogg, Amazon, HUL, Dettol, P&G, Disney and Flipkart.
Another 50% comes from small businesses advertising their services in the city while the rest comes from the ticketing of kids events. Expanding the sales team from three cities to 16 cities will help in further growing this revenue stream while kid’s events are poised to grow exponentially with events such as the largest Kids Educational Fair, Smart Kids Asia, coming to India for the first time later this month.
