Indian startup raises funding to build a Yelp for childcare services

When Naiyya Saggi returned to India after completing her management degree from Harvard Business School, she heard many young parents complain about the difficulties in finding childcare services in their vicinity. Classified portals like Just Dial weren’t effective.

Saggi grabbed the opportunity and launched BabyChakra, a local service search engine aimed at parents with newborns to five-year-olds.

Today, Saggi revealed that BabyChakra has raised seed funding from Mumbai Angels, Patni Family Office, and Singapore Angel Network. The deal size remains undisclosed.

Baby boomers

BabyChakra allows young parents to search for verified local service providers such as child specialists, playschools, daycare centers, prenatal classes, and play areas. The site has 5,500 listings covering Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi. The one-year-old startup claims to have served 250,000 parents across those cities.

“The funds raised through this round will be used primarily to hire top industry professionals for key roles and accelerate traction in our current markets. We want to be the platform of choice to help Indian parents make better everyday decisions for themselves and their children,” said Saggi, who’s the co-founder and CEO, in a statement. Plus, the team will build a mobile app.

The startup has tried to differentiate itself by taking a community-driven approach where users can get real-time recommendations or write reviews. Parents can also follow each other.

It plans to earn revenues from premium listings of local services, as well as commissions on the transactions that happen on the site.

While service ecommerce for new parents is relatively new in India, the online product segment of this category has seen significant venture capital attention. Earlier this year, FirstCry scooped US$36 million in fresh funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Valiant Capital while Hopscotch raised US$15 million across several rounds of funding.