Parentof, a decision sciences start-up that provides insights into child growth and decision analytics, has raised $1 million in seed funding, bringing their total funding since inception to $2 million.

The round was led by angel investor V Srinivas and other existing investors.

The capital raised will be used to further evolve the start-up’s technology, and to expand its partner network, including schools, vocational institutions and e-learning platforms.

Founded by Swaroop Madhavan, Dr Manohar Chikkanna and Dhananjay Prabhu in August 2015, the Bengaluru-based parent-tech start-up uses AI-powered ARC Engine (analysis, recommendation and curation) to identify and assess each child’s unique growth and developmental journey. This has helped the over two lakh children and is supported by over 500 schools, the start-up claims.

The ARC Engine, which uses AI and machine learning, is designed not just to achieve outcomes for children, but also to enable an anxiety free parenting experience, through decision sciences.

“With the new funding in place, we are piloting a system, which can help parents discover and engage with experts and services like paediatricians, psychologists, hobby classes, sports coaching etc., based on the unique growth needs of their child. This, paired with our recent acquisition of Pupilpod — an education management platform from Value Point Group — will help in enhancing the ARC engine’s capabilities and make AI personalised for every child,” said Madhavan.

Parentof currently serves over 500 partners and is working towards increasing its partner base to over a 1,000 in the next 12 months. On ensuring data privacy, Madhavan said, “Privacy is a huge concern any time kids are involved. To this end, we involve a leading data audit firm to ensure checks and balances are maintained.”

V Srinivas, the investor, said, “More and more parents are adopting online systems to educate and assist child growth and development. With the likes of ed-tech and commerce going mainstream for child-related consumption (Byju’s and Firstcry becoming Unicorns), acceptance by parents to e-related habits is growing at a tremendous pace. The work Parentof is doing is already being applauded in the US and India. I’ve chosen to stand in support because of their vision and their divergent insights.”