Bakipa wants to make it easy for parents to find baby and kids products on their phones

I don’t have a kid yet, but I’m at that point in my life where it’s more than just a distant possibility. And with a kid comes… responsibility? Sleeplessness? Joy? Well yeah, all that, but also tons and tons of stuff you need to buy: strollers, playpens, recliners, and I have no idea what else, but I’ll probably find out soon.

Solutions are available online for this bottomless money pit, of course. That is if you’re willing to do the legwork, trawl through various marketplaces, and compare prices and products yourself.

But Singapore-based Bakipa has a simpler way. Its mobile-first online marketplace features all kinds of new and used products for babies and kids that are available from retailers and individual sellers. Users can find items, compare prices, upload listings, all through their smartphones.

Bakipa is the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Tom and Marigold Duncan. The couple met while working in banking and their jobs took them from New Zealand to Australia and, eventually, Singapore. It was the arrival of their daughter that turned them onto the idea for Bakipa.

Like many founders before them, the incentive was to solve a problem they were facing themselves. “We realized there’s a big problem in the market [for baby products],” Marigold tells Tech in Asia.

Many parents would complain about how expensive things were. The user experience would be disjointed and frustrating, trying to look through general-purpose marketplaces, social media, and individual stores. “So we thought we could come up with a solution and gave it a shot,” she says.

Connecting parents

Tom and Marigold had a few run-ins with startups during their previous careers through side projects and some investments they made. “One of the businesses we had invested in was a marketplace, so we were familiar with the business model and we quite liked it,” Tom says.

The parenting niche made sense for the founders, he adds. “It’s a quite high-value customer segment in terms of spend but also repetition of spending as well.” As they found out for themselves, parents need to buy things constantly.

Parents can use the app to chat with each other, exchange parenting advice and tips, and socialize.

Besides its marketplace component, Bakipa also has a community aspect to it. Parents can use the app to chat with each other, exchange parenting advice and tips, and socialize. They can also find additional child-related services, from education and play to nannies and party services. The app also offers a blog featuring accounts of parents’ experiences, and tips on buying and selling kid’ products, and more.

“As we’ve discovered by becoming parents recently, it’s such an important time of life, where you’re going through so many experiences for the first time,” Marigold says. “Community is important, so we focused on building that, with content helping parents with parenting in Singapore, our own experiences as parents, and so on. We’ve seen some fantastic connections [among users], sharing stories and advice. And we want to foster that and add more [such] features.”

Planting seeds

Bakipa is currently raising seed funding. Participating in the round are mainly angel investors, including Komal Sahu, Sean Joseph, Alex Ognev, and Roopa Nath. The funding will fuel its expansion to Australia and product development, with a major redesign of the app forthcoming. Other possible expansion targets include Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur.

Growing a child and a startup