Babyoye's parent co to launch Kidsoye.com, another e-com site for pre-teen kids

Mumbai-based startup Nest Childcare Services Pvt Ltd that runs Babyoye.com, a niche e-commerce site for new parents, is scripting another niche site Kidsoye.com, an e-com website for all things kids. While Babyoye caters to the needs of new parents (mostly infant-related products), the new site seems to be targeting slightly older kids (although there would still be some overlap).

We have also noticed (before the site started sporting 'coming soon') that in spite of being two different sites, the company has integrated the interface of both Babyoye.com and Kidsoye.com (similar to what Firstcry.com did for its new site Goodlife). So whether a consumer is visiting one site or the other, he/she can easily switch between those. This essentially means that the traction is shared between the sites, which in turn, can result in higher conversion rates.

Nest Childcare Services was set up in May 2010 and is run by the husband-wife duo of Sanjay Nadkarni and Arunima Singhdeo. The company received its first round of funding to the tune of $2.5 million from Accel Partners and Tiger Global in April 2011. And in December of 2011, the company received an undisclosed amount from Bollywood celebrity Karisma Kapoor (who also became the single largest individual shareholder in the company and its brand ambassador).

The Site

The homepage (till we got a sneak peek) is divided into various sections like best sellers, new arrivals, popular products and featured brands. The products are available in eight categories (further divided into sub-categories) including toys and gaming, books and comics, clothes, kid's room (furniture, decor, utensils, lighting, etc), accessories (bags, watches, sunglasses, etc), footwear and school supplies (lunch boxes, school bags, stationary and rainwear, etc).

Once a product category is selected, the products can be further filtered according to age (0-6 months to 10-11 years), price, brands, gender and type of product. The company claims to have 96 brands on the site including Angry Birds, Barbie, Disney, Hot Wheels and Fun Skool, etc for toys.

Pricing and delivery

Most of the products come with offers and the cheapest product we could find on the site was a diaper from 'Huggies' for Rs 38 while the costliest product was 'Little Tikes PlayCenter playground' that costs around Rs 2 lakh (Rs 1,84,999 to be exact).

The site claimed all products are shipped free and cash on delivery (COD) is available for all the products. But since there are products that cost as low as Rs 38, we wonder how deep it would go in subsidising and acquiring customers. One way it is looking to address this is to charges Rs 50 for COD if the total shopping amount is less than Rs 500. But what about a customer paying online for a product priced at Rs 50- the company clarifies that 'this is an introductory offer for all customers', which means it will probably charge for delivery (for low costing products) in the future, a standard practice.

As far as deliver is concerned, the company claims to deliver in more than 5000 cities across India. In metros, the company is promising a delivery time of 2 to 3 days for products like diapers, baby feed, etc while 3 to 7 days for other products. For non metros, this time is increased to 3 to 12 days but for certain remote geographies; the time for delivery can also exceed 12 days.

When contacted by Techcircle.in, Nadkarni clarified, "The reason why you could access the site at one point but it now has a 'coming soon' banner is because it's still in the testing phase and we haven't even launched it in beta. But at times the technology team is doing Live testing, therefore granting access to users. Also, we are still in the process of adding new merchandise to the site hence most of the products you will find on the site are basically picked from sister site Babyeoye."

"While Babyoye will continue to cater to the needs of babies, Kidsoye.com will offers products to fulfil the needs of kids (like clothing, books, toys, accessories, etc) in the age group of 3-11 years." he added.

The other e-com players that offer kids products include Firstcry.com, Hushbabies.com, Hoopos.com and media house Network18 Group owned portal Homeshop18.com (that has added baby and kids product categories to its online shop), among others.

Although, the upcoming site seems to target a different category of customers, the jury is out whether the firm needs to build a separate site. Wouldn't it make more sense to retain consumers built for Babyoye to buy from same site when the kids grow up?