Digital media startup for parenting tips ZenParent raises $500K from i2india Venture Factory

Eight months after starting operations, parenting and child safety-focused portal ZenParent.in has secured $500,000 (Rs 3.17 crore) in funding from Bangalore-based i2india Venture Factory, run by i2india Private Limited.

The company will use the funds to expand its reach into other cities.

ZenParent, which started as an initiative to build child safety tools, has developed into a discovery platform that helps urban parents with various challenges related to child rearing. It has also built a personalised app for users.  The Android app is available on the Google Play Store.

Founded in August 2014 by Supriya Hiremagalur and Vinay Rao, ZenParent is still under the umbrella of i2india Venture Factory, a seed investor.

Through its web-based and mobile offerings, ZenParent provides answers for parenting queries and offers insights on personality, interests and life skills of children. The mobile app offers curated information related to child development articles, parenting and childcare tips, latest kid-related events, special recipes, book recommendations and movie/ TV show reviews.

Hiremagalur is an alumnus of the Indian School of Business (ISB) and has over nine years' of experience including five years in the management consulting industry. A graduate of NIT Surathkal, Rao is a serial entrepreneur and a partner at i2india. He also acts as a mentor to the ZenParent team.

"The company is incubated at i2india Venture Factory and will look to raise Series A funding in two-three months," Rao told Techcircle.in

i2india came into being six years ago with an initial capital of  $10 million from investors such as Tata Sons. It follows a co-founding and co-investment model and takes up to 33 per cent stake in startups incubated at its venture factory. Once a start-up is proven ample business viability and potential scaling up abilities, i2india Ventures (the investment arm of i2india Venture Factory) funds it for further growth. ZenParent is one such startup conceptualised, built and taken to market by i2india Venture Factory.

"We have decided to fund ZenParent because there are two things going in its favour – one, this solution is right in the intersection of the three major trends of interest to us—mobility, urbanisation and consumption inversion. The other is our commitment to fund original, innovative Indian products that show strong traction with users. ZenParents's user base is growing by around 100 per cent month-on-month, with strong signs on customer loyalty," said Deepam Mishra, CEO, i2india Venture Factory.

At Venture Factory, three startups –energy solutions company Green Power Systems, gamified interactive learning company i2play and small truck aggregator Shippr.in – are in talks to raise Series A funding of $2-5 million each.

Similar players in the market are babycenter.in and parentedge.in, which publishes a print magazine by the same name.