Bengaluru-based Tinystep, India's first parenting social network, has raised an undisclosed amount in seed funding from e-commerce giant Flipkart. The money will be used to develop the product, enhance user experience and strengthen the team.
The company plans to use the funds to develop the product, enhance user experience and strengthen its team. The money will also be utilised to further accelerate the company's growth and user engagement, it added.
"Silicon Valley has given us Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more awesome social products, Tinystep can be a tiny gift from India. Flipkart is helping us with the required guidance to continue our excelling growth," Tinystep founder Suhail Abidi said.
"This concept has great potential in the existing market, and it is the much needed tech product in the parenting domain," Flipkart Head Corporate Development Nishant Verman said. The child care industry holds massive potential and Tinystep being a community driven product is definitely going in the right direction towards dominating it, he added.
Tinystep is a mobile app that helps parents connect with each other to communicate, guide and collaborate with each other on parenting with features like Q&A Forum, individual and group chats.
Tinystep's 20-member team mostly comprises engineers from institutions such as Stanford and IITs.
Flipkart which has so far raised over $3 billion from institutional investors and is currently valued at $ 15 billion has shown interest to back a number of startups in the mobile technology space in the past few months. The company has so far invested in startups like media technology startup ZAPR, mobile gaming company Mech Mocha Game Studios and MadRat Games, and mobile technology startup Cube26.
The company recently went through a structural change where Sachin Bansal stepped down as the chief executive officer and was replaced by co-founder Binny Bansal.
BW Reporters
The author is Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld