How Naiyya Saggi built her startup Baby Chakra

She may not be a mother herself, but that didn't stop her from launching a website about parenthood. Through her experiences with other moms Naiyya Saggi, former McKinsey employee and Harvard alumna, realised that "Women were really struggling with maternity and childcare decisions that has massive information asymmetry". And so came the idea of a platform that helps young mothers in India figure out the best products and services for themselves and their children. Launched a year and a half back, Babychakra is now an app as well, with an estimated user base of half a million users.

But hey, I can find stuff off google, why download a separate app?

The way you actually discover these services on Babychakra is very different than let's say a google search or a classifieds listing. You actually discover it through reviews and recommendations by other mothers just like you in your locality. It is a social discovery process.

Moms Meaning Business

And what gave you the idea, that this might really be a need? Most Indian cultures depend on people within the family for childcare support and wisdom.

60% of India today lives in nuclear families. We do not have that support that our parents did in raising children. The whole premise was how do you solve that problem for them and how do you give young mothers access to credible, socially verified information around services, taking care of your child and raising your child the best you can.

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Users and Business owners are mostly mothers

About anywhere between 40-45% of women using Babychakra are working professionals. Contrary to what you see across a lot of other platforms, we have a lot of desktop traffic as well; working women accessing us at tea and lunch breaks at work. We have about 90% of our traffic coming from young mothers, but the 10% of the dads who find us are incredibly actively engaged. For them what ends up happening is that this is also a platform that helps them have access to simplified information that was earlier only the domain of mothers. Also 35% of the services that are featured on the site are mom-led.  A lot of our vendors are young moms serving other mothers.

Others in our series Moms Mean Business

So all first time moms out there, if technology is at your fingertips, so is help online. Your mothers might be surprised, but hey, the world is changing every day, isn't it?