This parenting app grows with your child

Photo credit: Sandeepachetan

Balasubramanian Venkatachalam had no idea what to do when his youngest daughter caught chicken pox. His daughter’s pediatrician said they had missed the window of opportunity to get her vaccinated. While the most likely culprits were her classmates, Balasubramanian soon discovered that other parents had also been caught off guard by the pesky virus.

“At that point, I was struck with the idea of a vaccination schedule,” Balasubramanian reminisces. “I realized that if I had some way to track and monitor the things my daughter needed while growing up, the problem could have been avoided.”

This was where the idea for BabyBerry was born.

Along with his wife, Subhashini Subramaniam, and his friend, Dev Vig, Balasubramanian worked on creating an app that would adapt to and grow with the ever-changing and unique lives of young children.

The startup has taken several directions since that first step. Its app, which claims over 50,000 downloads, now offers everything from personalized growth charts to an ecommerce store with baby essentials.

The trio launched BabyBerry in November 2015 and today announced an angel round of US$1 million. The money will be used on marketing and product development, with the team focusing on expanding their services to include expecting parents.

BabyBerry grows with you

The three founders of BabyBerry – Dev Vig, Subhashini Subramaniam, and Balasubramanian Venkatachalam

The app’s business model is interesting because it is infinitely sticky. The more a parent relies on BabyBerry, the more useful it becomes.

Take medical records, for example. When most parents take their children to the doctor, they carry folders haphazardly stuffed with a growing mass of papers. “This makes things really hard to keep track of and even more difficult to access,” explains Balasubramanian. “We capture everything in digital form. Parents can keep track of all of the info and search it easily. We even back up your data onto the cloud.”

The team has developed a recommendation engine, called mBryo, to provide tailored content based on a child’s age and growth progress. It also runs a community platform targeting parents, doctors, and special interest groups.

While the platform is free to use, BabyBerry’s monetization model is based on its most valuable asset: data. “We’ve met over 13,000 parents in the past few months and archived a lot of that research,” Balasubramanian says. “We were going to offices at Tech Mahindra, or Intel, or Infosys and setting up kiosks.”

Babies need a lot of attention