Parenting social network Tinystep has received $2 million in funding from Flipkart. Founded in 2015, Tinystep is a Bengaluru-based start-up that works in the sphere of pregnancy and parenting, and had previously raised seed funding from Flipkart.

With the funding, the start-up is looking to advance its product with the launch of an iOS app, better user experience and expand on service offering.

“We attract 85,000 monthly active users and 25,000 daily active users, of which 5 per cent are dads. We have grown as a product, as a team and have learnt to now focus our energies on new revenue models,” founder Suhail Abidi told BusinessLine .

Abidi said the companys’s primary revenue stream comes from big brands that pay a fee of ₹25,000 a month to host a page, where they provide useful content to mothers and list their products. “Brands can put up content — video, infographic, blog — useful to moms. All brand pages are verified by us and pulled down if they do not follow the guidelines we have set,” he said.

With the funding, a second revenue stream is being set up by listing local service providers such as day-care centres, dieticians, nutritionists, tutors, clinics, lactation consultants, swimming coaches, etc. “We want to be a Zomato of all these local services for our pan-India network of moms, from the pre-pregnancy stage to when their kids are five years old.”

Ram Papatla, Vice-President - Product Management, Flipkart, and Tinystep Board Member,said: “Tinystep has a great team that has built strong community-focused features, which are driving user adoption. We believe they are on their way to build a truly differentiated content-rich social network for parents. Baby care is an important category for Flipkart and the investment in Tinystep will enable Flipkart to leverage Tinystep’s strong user community to build a network of influencers.”

The mother and baby care market is an $50-billion dollar industry and continues to grow at 25-30 per cent year on year.

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