The teen boy who just got funding for his parenting app

My Child App founder Harsh Songra

Harsh Songra is 19 years old. When he was nine, he was detected with a disorder called dyspraxia. First he beat that back, and then he turned adversity into invention. He built a parenting app that has been downloaded by thousands of people in 100 countries. But say “fantastic,” and Harsh cuts you short.

“Reaching 8,000 people in a year is not fantastic. I am aiming for 300,000 by April, May,” Harsh tells Tech in Asia haltingly, as if weighing every word. Does he sound ambitious? Not if you hear his game plan.

A self-confessed geek, he says he builds beautiful Android apps. But he shot to fame, really, with My Child App, a startup in Bangalore that he co-founded with two 19-year-old friends, Aafreen Ansari and Shreya Shrivastava.

The app helps parents track their child’s growth and detect developmental disorders. “It stays with a parent right from pregnancy and through the journey of bringing up the child,” says Harsh. And it can help a parent diagnose a disorder in 45 seconds.

Last year, it caught the attention of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg and she mentioned Harsh and his app in a post. She wrote about how the FBStart program helped My Child App get started. That’s when he became a bit of a celebrity. But last week came the icing on the cake.

Harsh has bagged US$100,000 in seed funding for My Child App. The round was led by Silicon Valley-based 500 Startups. A group of angel investors and the Singapore Angel Network also threw in cash.

Disorder and order

Photo Credit: Jorge

“Having information about learning disorders and who to speak with on a simple mobile app, where a parent answers simple questions about the child’s development, is incredibly powerful in regions where mental health professionals aren’t readily available or parents don’t have access to the right medical professionals,” says Pankaj Jain, a partner at 500 Startups.

Who knows that better than Harsh and his family. Growing up in his hometown of Bhopal, his dyspraxia went undiagnosed until the age of nine. It can affect motor skills like walking or jumping, hand movements needed to write clearly, and even tongue movements needed to pronounce words correctly.

Children don’t outgrow dyspraxia, but through occupational, physical, and speech therapies they can learn to work around their challenges and build on their strengths.

Harsh certainly did. “At the age of 15, I became quite normal,” he says. But his life experience found its way into the app. Harsh last year moved to Bangalore, India’s tech hub. He dropped out of college to work on My Child – as did Aafreen. Of the startup’s founders, only Shreya is still pursuing a degree – a bachelor’s in computer application.

Ask Harsh if his parents are his biggest inspiration and he quickly says, “Yes, them too, but also Steve Jobs and Elon Musk!”

How the app can help your child

The gameplan