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There are many companies making waves in the $46 bn Babytech industry and investors are seeing the plethora of opportunities. Forbes estimated that between 2013 and 2019, $500 million has been invested into these businesses. Robin Raskin, founder of the BabyTECH Summit, describes them as “[shining] a light on new millennial parents, who [are] data-driven”, creating products and services making “parenting easier.”
Babytech isn’t just tech products, it’s all innovative solutions surrounding baby and childcare as well as parental support for the modern parent, most specifically, millennial parents. The following three companies have already started developing thriving businesses in the sector:
Mamamade is a company that focuses on putting parents first. Noticing that the world has been slow to adapt to the modern parent, specifically those with two working parents, combined with a nutritional decline in children’s health, they created the perfect healthy solution for busy parents and hungry toddlers. Mamamade provides organic plant-based baby and toddler meals via a subscription model to their community of like-minded parents, aka “Mamamates.”
To date, the company has delivered over 175,000 meals, achieved 1000% growth since January 2020 and just recently moved into their new 2,000 square foot kitchen facility. Their online community of 40,000 Mamamates, including celebrities Rochelle Humes and Millie Mackintosh, are at the core of everything they do from product to content to events. Soaring their way through a $5bn meal kit industry, it’s no surprise that they’ve already hit their £400,000 crowdfunding target, with just a few days to go, they’ve garnered 236 investors raising £620,757. You can visit the pitch here.
Louenna is on a mission to put a ‘Nanny in the pocket of millions of parents worldwide.’ Founder, Louenna Hood, has worked in the industry for 18 years, providing her services to several royal families. During her time as a Nanny, she realised that today’s parents have a lot of access to information, but less direction than ever before. She set out to develop an app which can be accessed from all over the world. The app features timers, logs, a video library, 240 family recipes and 250 activity ideas.
According to Louenna, the cost of a Norland Nanny can be up to £55,000 a year, but the app provides a cost-friendly solution at just £4.99 a month or £24.99 for an annual subscription. What Louenna does is take something that was once only accessible for the 1%, and bring a tech-forward solution to the mass market. The expense of raising a child is the biggest reason we’re seeing a decline in childbirth rates. Louenna shows parents, and those considering children in their future, that having a child doesn’t have to be a financial burden, and help can be right on hand.
Before raising on Seedrs, in just over a year, the app already had 25,000 downloads and over 3,500 paying subscribers. Following a successful campaign with an initial target of £125,000, they’ve successfully overfunded by 127% from 185 investors, currently sitting at £159,960. You can learn more about Louenna here.
Dearbump is the UK’s first corporate parental well-being programme designed to transition women into parenthood during the early stages of their pregnancy. 54,000 women leave the workplace every year due to feeling like they cannot manage both a newborn and a career, which makes it difficult for businesses to retain star talent.
Dearbump is an opportunity for organisations to give peace of mind to women about their morals. Pregnancy discrimination has long been an issue spanning many decades, and whilst there has been a massive shift, especially with COVID-19 showing us that remote work is possible, there’s still a way to go.
Dearbump are here to help both the mother but also the workplace through a monthly subscription box priced from £25 a month of tailored products as well as wellbeing support. Employees are made to feel valued and supported with Dearbump’s wellbeing corporate package, which employers will benefit from when it comes to reducing staff turnover.
So far Dearbump has sold 6000 boxes in the UK, partnered with 200 brands, and the company has grown by 300% each year. This multi-award winning subscription box service tackles a problem that has never been presented with a realistic solution before and we’re excited to be a part of their journey. With a target of £100,011, Dearbump have exceeded that and are now 119% overfunded, backed by 93 investors. You can learn more about Dearbump here.
💡 If childbirth is going down, how is Babytech going up?
Millennials, the world’s most powerful consumer and impactful generation, make up over 5.5 million parents in the UK. According to Hoop, it’s predicted that by 2025, millennials will make up 83% of all parents.
Whilst the common narrative is the decline in child births as society progresses, millennials having fewer children doesn’t change the fact that the Babytech industry is growing. A report from Statista shows that the market size for baby monitors has grown from $1.2 bn in 2019 to $1.4 bn in 2021, predicted to reach almost $2 bn in 2027.
Millennials are technology-reliant, this group of 25 to 40 year olds were brought up in a fast-paced changing world compared to Gen X and the Baby Boomers. Former Vodafone chief executive, Sir Christopher Gent, told The Guardian in 2010, “We projected there would only be about a million [mobile phones] ever sold and we would get about 35% of the market.” Meanwhile, BT predicted only 500,000 mobile phones would be sold yet today there are 7.1 bn mobile phones, 6.37bn being smartphones.
The technology created over the last couple of decades has had a focus on making life easier for us. It’s all about convenience and that’s what millennials are used to, getting things done quickly and efficiently. So it’s no wonder that the Babytech industry is growing as founders are spotting opportunities to cater to today’s issues within modern society.
💡 What other major issues are millennial parents facing today?
Well-being. Millennials live busy lives and self-care is no longer a hot topic but a lifestyle. That means for them, sleep is cherished, proven by the fact that millennials get on average 9 hours of sleep a night, compared to 8.6 hours of the previous generation. When a baby would wake its parents up at night to be fed or simply comforted, parents would have to instantly adapt to their child’s sleeping pattern. There wasn’t a direct solution, you’d just wake up and try and get your baby to sleep again, so that you can sleep again. Now there’s technology to do that for you.
Dr. Harvey Karp created the SNOO Smart Sleeper, a Smart baby cot which acts as a “24/7 babysitter”. Whilst some may question the £1,000 price tag, this revolutionary cot has been proven to calm fussing using responsive motion and sound to calm down a baby in under a minute. It also naturally sleep trains, making it easier to transition to a cot. With a click of a button, you can monitor your baby’s sleep report and access sleep consultants 7 days a week. Parents get more sleep whilst babies get a smoother night.
💡 Who else has Seedrs seen success from?
Besides the successes of the live and current Mamamade, Louenne and Dearbump on Seedrs, Mama.code – a Seedrs alumni – made their mark in the Babytech industry just a few years ago.
Mama.codes was founded by three London mums working in digital industries who wanted their children to “fall in love with coding.” Their award winning EdTech brand offers creative coding education for children aged 3-13 years old. From Jump & Code to Scratch Coding and Holiday Camps, Mama.codes has created a simplified curriculum using songs, jokes, stories and games, to help today’s children thrive in a ‘world ruled by technology’.
In 2019, Mama.codes set out to raise £50,001 on Seedrs, just two years after launching. With the world going through a digital transformation, it was a pleasure to see investors get on board with the education of the next generation of children. Mama.codes ended up raising £117,356 from just 19 investors, 234% overfunded.
Babytech is disrupting the historic approach to parenthood and these companies are making bold movements in the space. This month, all our startups in this industry are overfunded because investors are seeing the opportunity firsthand. Interested in learning more about these startups? View live campaigns here.
