This Entrepreneur’s Aggregation Platform Is Making It Easy For Parents To Get Childcare And Preschool In India

Much has been said and written about how parenthood gives women new strength, power, and confidence. American writer JD Salinger was particularly intrigued by The Catcher in the Rye when he wrote: "Mothers are a little mad." Entrepreneurship can be a kind of insane mother, who comes from a place of unconditional love and wishes her children well.

In 2016, Ketika Kapoor was looking for blocks for her 10-month-old baby. Ketika was preparing to return to work from the office after about a year of easy work.

After completing her undergraduate degree in information technology from Indraprastha College for Women in Delhi, and an MBA from the Institute of Management Development in Gurugram, she went through the stages of her consulting career at Aon Hewitt to the directorate.

For a mother who is already guilty of choosing to look for a job, clean and informal day-to-day care only added to the problem.

"You must be very lucky to be able to contact the nursery when you call; pick them up so you can get all the details and requirements. They would usually ask to visit the center for a fee and fee. To discuss other details," Ketika says. . His story.

She found that daycare centers in India do not have legal requirements or licenses, which leaves the industry behind in terms of transparency and demands more in terms of structure and friendliness.

This encouraged him to give up his lucrative ten-year business career and take up an entrepreneurship degree. His idea was to use the technology to create a platform that would guarantee parents easy access to daycare centers and preschools. And so in 2017, he founded the Delhi collector forum - ProEves, along with co-founder Divya Agarwal.

It has more than 7,000 locations in capitals and Levels I and II, filled with information about acceptable age groups, working hours, total capacity, and staff ratio per child.

How ProEves works?

The starter now operates under the subway and in Level I and Level II cities, where kindergartens and day centers can choose whether they will be assigned to children of general or higher grade between the ages of 6 months and 12 years.

ProEves offers integrated SaaS support for its digital flow in certain Edge locations, the highest quality service. In addition to the subscription fees for the selected list, the start-up receives a commission for all orders on the platform. It also serves more than 100 businesses that help parents who work with childcare needs.

Navigating the market

Ketika says that being the first to enter the preschool space has been both a responsibility and a challenge. "Anyone who wants to build an e-commerce brand today can check out products like Amazon and Flipkart, but no one is looking for ProEves," she says.

India's Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) market is currently dominated by preschool chains such as Tree House Education & Accessories, Zee Learn (Kidzee), EuroKids International, Hello Kids Education India, and Kangaroo Kids Education.

Ketika believes that "the industry is fragmented and unregulated, ready for disruption and we are the largest collectors with quality centers in India, aiming for a $ 3 billion market opportunity that grows 20% each year".

Following a fundraiser in 2019, the startup is in talks to raise a new fundraiser to expand the team, grow the business and expand its technological capabilities. While Ketika declined to say how much she has invested in the business, she says it has increased eightfold with digital adoption from 2020 to 2021, with an ARR of over $ 1 million. In the future, ProEves is focusing on transforming several centers into ProEves Edge Centers.