Where do over 3 million Indian parents find the answers to their family problems?

What we realized over a period of time is there are 3 things which are going to be important for a parent. First is they want to be in a safe space. Second was that parents are not looking for generalized content. They were looking at really personalized, relevant, specific content which they could use to take a decision for their child. Or to raise their child. And the third thing was, parents were looking for support, not judgment.

Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Show. I'm delighted to have Nitin Pandey, who is the founder of Parentune, which is an Indian parents network. Now, it's said that it takes a village to raise a family. But now we're living in nuclear families, we're missing the village. So Parentune has become a virtual village in India. Nitin, Tell us about Parentune and how you're getting everybody noticed.

Hey, Jim, pleasure to be talking to you today. And like you said, it takes a village to raise a child. And what we've done over the years is we've understood how parents look for information, advice to raise their child at various stages while they become a parent, to then raising a child, and then to taking care of their family. And if you notice in that journey how parents learn about various things is case 1 in hand is when they are looking or searching for an answer or for a solution or to validate information. And that is when they go searching for it. And this is where they would typically find millions of solutions, page 1, 2, and so on and so forth. Now the challenge for them at that point in time is What should I— what is relevant for me and what should I really trust? And that is when they want to validate. So the first part, when they get to know about Parentune, is when they actually find these results and they would find the content to read from Parentune on Google. So that's a big use case. The second one is when they further want to validate that and they reach out to their friends, family on chat, on messaging, and then they say, hey, You know, look, this is what I found, what do you think? And then there is a like-minded parent on the other side, and then they realize that it's actually quite tedious trying to find people, their time, and all of that. And that is again when they discover Parentume, because we are a network of parents, and here you can create your own network, and the network never sleeps. They're always available to help you, and if you have like-minded parents, then they help you. So these are 2 big ways. The third one, which became over the years bigger for us and now perhaps is almost as big as search, is when a parent shares out content. And that is where we are seeing now network effects playing the role, wherein when a parent shares the content out, people find that content valuable and they come back, join the network, and then they add their own valuable content.

Nitin, that's fantastic. So you're really benefiting from the WhatsApp cascade effect, right, of content coming on and then being shared. Just give us an idea of the scale, Nitin, of Parentune, and also a little bit of the history. Sure.

So we started back in 2012 as an idea, and it was just idea in a box. There was nothing apart from a core insight that Parents need support and they need real-time validated trusted report and they want to use that to raise their child. They don't want to take a chance. And given that families were moving into urban nuclear setups back in 2012, this became more than ever like an impending urgent thing. And I used to work in an education company. I had seen there a huge gap. So we started Parentune as a thought process. That we will become the trustworthy real-time advice center for a parent. But it was a long journey from there. 2014 is when we started taking some kind of a shape. We'd done all the initial beta testing, we went online in 2013, but we started getting some initial results in 2014. And what we realized over a period of time is there are 3 things which are going to be important for a parent. First is they want to be in a safe space, So they almost don't want to be in social media. They want it to be a closed network and their own network within the network, which is like a safe place. Second was that parents are not looking for generalized content. They were looking at really personalized, relevant, specific content which they could use to take a decision for their child. or to raise their child. And the third thing was parents were looking for support, not judgment. They were not looking to be told, oh, this is not good, you're not a good parent. They knew that they wanted to do more and that is why they were looking for support. So one of the last things to do is give them a report card. So these were 3 things which we realized and on top of that we started building the whole network.

And Nitin, how many parents do you have now across India? You're in the northern part of India, you mentioned. Is this national? And also, let's just then talk about language, because I know that in India English is a national language, but you have a lot of different dialects as well. I know from my PR work we have many different dialects to deal with. So can you just talk to us about the scale and how you're solving that problem?

Sure. So Jim, today we are a little over 5 million registered parents on ParentU. It's the most used parents network in India. It's a pan-India network. It's available on an Android app. It's available on a mobile progressive web app and also on the website and mobile site. And you'll find most of the parents, close to 97% of the parents, use us on the mobile. And you'll find that the number of parents helping each other, again, majority of them have an impending worry which can wait for hours at most, but most of the times on Parentune today, they find a solution in minutes. And coming back to the languages, the reason I talked about the importance of this time is also from the fact what you said. India is almost a continent by itself. So there are 27 massively spoken languages in India, out of which 5 are highly penetrable in terms of internet. Our internet penetration is upwards of 75% in these languages, and these are English, Hindi, Marathi, and Telugu. So we are available in these 5 languages today. And apart from this, what's really interesting in India is you can use English alphabets and letters to speak or to type in your native language. And that's something which we call Winglish, and that's over the period what we've learned. So Parentune, a lot of parents use it in their own native language with their own English alphabets, and that's really popular. And Jim, another thing which I wanted to share with you is while still we are largely India-based, we have around 11% of parents outside of India who are using Parentune. So every month, for example, we get around 25,000 parents from UK using Parentune. And these are just not Indian parents, these are native United Kingdom natives. And then similarly from Africa, from US, Southeast Asia. So we do have parents now proliferating and forming small clusters and networks across the world.

Wow, that's amazing. And I can really see having been a parent myself and a dad living in China at the time, looking for experience and wisdom that in the past used to come from grandparents or parents, as you say. Now we're separated quite from those people, Nitin. And in terms of the skill sets and the acquisition of the experts, because you've covered off neatly how parents are coming to you, they've searched and got lost and then found one trusted place to To gather. What about on the other side? Is it just parents talking to parents? Because I see on the website you've got pediatricians, gynecologists, education specialists. How are you reaching out to that community as well, Nitin?

I think it's two ways, Jim. And if you look at the expert panel on Parentune, now those stands at double-digit hundreds of experts, right? And there are experts from UK and Australia and New Zealand and India and These experts now are coming and joining us, but this wasn't the case initially. We initially reached out to top 20 doctors and experts in India in various spaces. I came in from education, so I had that access and I had my own experience to offer. So education was always there, but we needed pediatricians, we needed gynecologists, we needed developmental pediatricians, we needed experts in areas like autism, ADHD, and special needs. Then looking at the needs for today, we need pulmonologists, right? We need experts who are really there, up there telling people how to stay safe from COVID So all these experts in the beginning, we actually handpicked and we reached out to them. And I think like they say, quality begets quality. And that's the same thing which started happening over a period of time. But quite frankly, it wasn't as easy as it sounds today. What happened was like 3 steps. In the beginning, the questions— the experts were there, questions were not there. Then the questions started happening and then experts could not answer the number of questions which were coming. So we needed to add more experts. So then we started reaching out to experts. And in that phase, we created a form which was join the expert panel and experts needed to upload their details, CV, their degrees and say, why would they want to join us? And we just put it out there thinking that let's see what happens. And to our surprise, as the network became bigger, that form fill started happening on a daily basis. And today, every day we get 2 or 3 experts applying to be part of our panel.

And when you say you put it out there, can you just be more specific? When you say you put it out there, is it on LinkedIn or on Facebook or on education websites? How are you Placing your expert panel application form in front of those experts?

So in the beginning, Jim, we put it out on LinkedIn and quite frankly, we didn't get much response. And then we put it back out to our own website and app when we launched the app. On the website, we got some traction, but on the app we got more traction. And what we did was we linked the, the Q&A sections, detail pages We started putting links there, a small, almost a waymarker saying that, okay, in case you are an expert in reading this and would like to join our expert panel, you can click here and give us your details and we'll get in touch with you. And then it started working better that way. And then over a period of time, we asked our own experts to give us more recommendations and recommend an expert. And I think that worked the best.

Sort of almost a member-get-member approach. Interesting how you solved that, Nitin. And let's just talk for a moment about the business model, Nitin. Is this a free service? On your website you have a Parent Tune Plus, for example. Can you just take us— is it a freemium model? Help us to understand.

You got it. It's a freemium model which has the gateway to the network, to the safe place, is accessible to anyone without having to pay anything. But yeah, you need to verify your account. You need to verify your details so that you get that tick mark from the network saying that, yeah, you are a verified profile. And now we know that we have— we don't have an email, a bot, but we have a real person and we know who this real person is. So once you've done that, you are inside the network. And then you can, you know, reach out to parents, you can ask a question, but your first question is on us. But the moment you have more than a question, because you need to keep asking questions, clearing doubts with experts, or if you want to attend these workshops which we do— so there are lives which we do which are free lives, and then there are paid lives. If you want to attend those paid lives, you want to ask more questions, you want 24/7 expert access then you take a subscription. And again, you can take a subscription annually, which is called Parentune Plus, or you can take it even monthly. And in case you have a good experience, great, you renew, you keep increasing your subscription. In case you don't have a good experience, you can stop and we refund the rest of the value. So it's become also very easy to use over the years. And apart from trust, the fact that I'm using it as I need it is also available on that freemium model. So that works really well for a parent.

That's really nice, Nitin. And just talk to us about how much we're talking about, because India is known for having some wealthy but also many that are not. How do you get the pricing so that it's sustainable for you, but also serving what is obviously a genuine purpose around helping parents to Remove anxiety through knowledge.

Absolutely. So one thing which has really been at the center of what Parentune has done is how do you make expert-validated information accessible across languages. So that is not paid, for example, that's accessible at any point of time. And just to give you an idea, it's around half a pound value which you need to spend on attending a live or a workshop. or sometimes £1. But if you want to take a whole monthly subscription and you want to attend all the lives which are happening, all you pay is around £3 for a month.

Wonderful. So really making it very accessible. Absolutely.

And given that India right now is going through COVID times, we've slashed it to £1 only during the COVID times. We slashed the monthly subscription to £1 and the yearly subscription, which was around £12 to £15, we've reduced it to just about £5 for the whole year.

So really very affordable. And from a practical point of view, what do people use in India to pay? Because bank transfer, these are— is not relevant. This is a micropayment really, isn't it? Nitin, what are they using in terms of payment methods? Mobile?

Yeah, there are mobile wallets, there are internet banking is now enabled by UPI in India. So it's become very easy. And there are a lot of payment wallets. So most Mostly parents are using payment wallets. And for the parents who are outside India, they are typically doing this through their credit cards.

And do you have the same pricing regardless of geography? So maybe someone in a country like the UK or Singapore or Australia has a different economic profile to one in India. Do you have different pricing by geography, or is it unitary pricing?

During the COVID times, we're keeping it the same, because I think it's really times of needs across. And I think we want to be as positive as possible during the, during this environment. So we are keeping the same. But yeah, you're right. Pre-COVID and then post-COVID also, you'll see that the pricing would change in various geographies.

Oh, can you just share with us then about the promotion of Perintune using, for example, social media? I know that in India, I think one of the largest user groups on Facebook is from India. What are your channels to reach out to new parents over and beyond this sort of member-get-member that you've explained is also working so well for you, Nitin?

Jim, over the years, search has been really important for us because if you see a parent's journey, search is very important for them and that's the first time they're looking for help. You become— you're expecting or even before that when you're looking to be a parent, you want to know a little about it, For example, women want to know about what is the fertility period and when is that we should look at conceiving, what should be my birthing plan, right, where, which hospitals should I look at for my birthing and what doctor should be there on my list, right. So you go online and you ask around or you ask your friends and those 2 are very important for us. So search is still continuing to be a very important part of our promotional Or discovery of Parentune. The second is when they ask around, and that is where even if we were to spend money, we would like to spend money where parents are asking around. And that is where Facebook, WhatsApp becomes very important. In India, WhatsApp is really popular being used across, right? So that is why you'll find on Parentune everything is WhatsAppable. You can just WhatsApp out, right? So that's second, Facebook and WhatsApp. But what we are trying to do now and trying to also find more parents to discover us are other platforms like LinkedIn. Instagram is something which we started working on recently. So that's there, but yeah, with the limited marketing dollars to spend or pounds to spend, that's how we're going about it. Would we like to do more? Yeah, definitely.

Nitin, it sounds like you've already accomplished a huge amount. And Nitin, then Final question. With COVID obviously impacting people in India, are people managing to find some solutions on Parentune to COVID-related questions?

Yes. So on Parentune, if you were to look even now, Jim, you would find something called COVID-19 support. So we created a separate cluster. There's FAQ-style questions, there are videos right from prone position, breathing exercises, how to stay calm, how to know if your child is facing anxiety, what are the signs, how should you take care of your family, how to mask up, how to create a face shield at home, to whatnot, right? You'll find everything. And then you'll also find lives, Parenting Lives, which we do every second day. There's a COVID-related area which we cover in those 1 hour of Q&A style Parenting Live. And then on top of that, in Ask Expert, you have all the experts, including pulmonologists, who are taking these questions every day.

Nitin, that's an amazing contribution you're making. How can people find out more about Parentune and Nitin Pandey?

So what they could do is they could just go on a Play Store or Google and type parentune.com, and Parentune is with a single T. So that's the easiest, and the best experience of Parentune is on the mobile app. And unfortunately right now we are not on the iOS but hoping to be there sometime soon. But on the Android, that's the best experience to get. In case you don't use Android, then you can use the mobile site, which is just go on your mobile on the browser Safari, Chrome, whatever you use, and you type parentune.com. And that's how you start using us. You will start getting into the safe space, start getting validated advice from experts and parents.

Nitin Pandey joining me all the way from northern India today. Thank you so much for joining me on The Unnoticed Show and explaining what an amazing job you've done on getting ParentU noticed.

Thank you, Jim, and namaste to you and everyone who's listening to your show. Thank you for the opportunity.

My pleasure. I've learned so much from you today. And obviously, from all of us listening, we send our best wishes to all of you in India during this terrible COVID times. Thank you once again for joining me. on the show. And I'll put all of the links to Nitin's Perentune and to his LinkedIn as well in the show notes. Thank you for joining me, Jim James, on this episode of The Unnoticed Show. Thank you for joining me, Jim James, on The Unnoticed Show, and I hope that you found it useful. I'm on a mission to help business owners to unlock the value in their businesses through communications and getting noticed. If you've enjoyed this show, do please share it with other business owners. Rate it on iTunes or on other players as well. For articles written about each podcast and other topics to do with getting noticed, just come to my website eastwestpr.com, subscribe to the free weekly newsletter. Keep on communicating and let me know how you're getting on.