Child healthcare startup Babygogo gets $300K seed funding

AddoDoc Technologies Pvt Ltd, which runs the Babygogo mobile app that connects parents with child healthcare experts, said on Tuesday it has raised Rs 2 crore ($300,000) in a seed funding round led by angel investor Rajul Garg.

A number of healthcare executives took part in the round. These include Daljit Singh, president at Fortis Healthcare; Aditya Vij, ex-CEO of Fortis Healthcare; Kishore Kumar, founder and chairman of Cloudnine Hospitals; and Shuchin Bajaj, co-founder of Cygnus Hospitals, the startup said in a statement.

Other investors include Salil Kapoor, India managing director of video-on-demand service HOOQ; Ashu Agarwal, director at BW Accelerate; Ritesh Malik, founder of Innov8; Ashish Tulsian, founder of Posist; and Afsal Salu, co-founder of BigBasket-acquired logistics startup Delyver.

Garg has earlier put money in healthcare startups Qikwell and Cygnus Hospitals. He also recently invested in LifCare, a full-service pharmacy targeting patients with chronic illnesses.

Health-tech startups have been attracting a lot of investor interest in recent years. Practo, which helps patients find doctors online besides providing other services, raised $90 million while Lybrate, an online and mobile-based platform that connects patients to doctors, secured $10 million last year.

While companies such as Practo offer a wide range of services for all types of patients and illnesses, a bunch of health-tech startups are focusing on childcare advice online. Some of these ventures have also raised funding. My Child App, which helps parents track learning disorder in children, raised $100,000 in January. In February, parenting app BabyBerry secured $1 million (Rs 6.8 crore) in angel funding from a bunch of investors.

Babygogo, however, said it is neither a content platform like BabyCenter nor a doctor discovery platform like Practo. "We are working in the niche (area) of mother and child healthcare, delivering value through personalized content," the company said.

The startup said it will use the funds to improve its technology and analytical engine, and to explore new channels in digital marketing.

AddoDoc, a platform for doctors to manage patient data, was founded in 2014 by Siddhartha Ahluwalia. Ahluwalia, along with co-founders Sowrab NRS and Satyadeep Karnati, launched the Babygogo app in October 2015.

The mobile app enables parents to interact with other parents and health experts for child-related queries. It has pediatric doctors on its platform to help parents seek medical advice on baby health, food, growth and psychology, among others. The startup is also building a team of in-house experts on child health to help pregnant women and mothers, it added.