Vishal GuptaFounder of Mycity4kids Published On: Friday, May 27, 2016 Views 2748

mycity4kids is the largest content platform for parents and more specifically, Mums, in India. The content consists of:

• The largest Mommy Blogger platform with over 1200 bloggers and 8000 blogs
• Curated content from the 25 members strong editorial team and specialised content from experts in various fields related to parenting and child care.
• The largest discovery platform for kids services and events with more than 75,000 service providers across 9 cities

3 million Mums visit the site every month to consume this content which is a good indicator of how popular the site is, at an overall level.

Within this, the most popular content on mycity4kids is the blogs contributed by Mums where they share their stories of the joy and frustration that constitute parenthood. It’s popular because every Mum feels that she’s not alone and that there is someone else, going through exactly the same experience, good or bad, making it a virtual support group for the entire Mum community.

Modern parenting isn’t easy and the demands it places on parents and more specifically, Mums, can make it quite stressful. From taking decisions on schooling, to what classes to send the kids to, planning holidays to organising play dates, scheduling daily pick-ups and drops for kids to managing their own careers and home, mothers simply have a lot on their plate to deal with.

We wanted to create a platform that acts as a virtual sounding board which provides guidance, reassurance and support by aggregating the wisdom of mothers across the country.

A lot has changed since we were children impacting the flow of parenting knowledge. Nuclear families, moving across cities, working spouses, virtual communities are some examples of this change. The result of all this is that unlike earlier when parenting knowledge flowed vertically from grandparents to parents, we see a shift in that knowledge flow is much more horizontal, with peer group advice from other Mums playing a much larger and more influential role. Our platform facilitates this exchange of knowledge between Mums, acts as a harbinger of hope, inspiration and happiness for them thus ensuring that the job of parenting never overrides the joy of parenting.

Lastly, as a parent, one is always looking for places to take the kids to – whether it is a weekend outing or heated swimming pools in the Delhi winter. All this content is readily available on mycity4kids making parenting life so much easier.

The only thing worthy worrying about is ill-health. Everything else can be handled.

The most challenging part of he journey has been to identify what will make a Mum come to mycity4kids every day.It took us a while to throw away our ‘large-corporate hats’ and understand that the key was building a great product – we came from backgrounds where the product was mostly ‘fixed’ and every other element of the marketing mix were levers to be turned.

The vision for mycity4kids is to aggregate the wisdom of the Mum community by providing them with hope, inspiration, knowledge and comfort in their parenting journey. We’re enabling this through the 1200 bloggers who share their experiences on our platform and our Editorial team, consisting entirely of Mums, that provides curated content for every city. The quality and diversity of the content make a compelling reason for Mums to visit the site, as validated by the 55% repeat rate.

We bootstrapped the venture initially by investing 50 lacs from our savings. We then raised monies from YourNest and subsequently from SIDBIVeture Capital.

We do this by creating a work culture where everyone has a lot of space to demonstrate their talent and creativity.

• Have a positive outlook
• Find time to do things that make you happy
• Persevere even when the chips are down

I like using Twitter as an online education tool by following some interesting folks. That apart, I use Uber and Whatsapp regularly.

Waking up between 530 and 6 most mornings to play tennis.

Spending less time on the phone when I’m home.

• One tip to success

Determination

• One mistake you believe every individual must avoid

Having a fixed mindset

• One most important lesson that you have learnt till now

The product is everything in the online world

Our vision is to harness the wisdom of the Mum community and to do this, we want to add languages and videos to our blogging platform. We will also add interest-based groups to achieve our vision.

Complete my graduation or post-graduation abroad.

Goa, Thailand and London.

“Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself”.BazLuhrman