Rebalance Startup: Parenting Marketplace, Nestery raises $500K in pre-seed
There are as many theories as there are babies, and modern parents raising children in the digital age are bombarded with advice/choices. Vaishnavi and Viswanathan’s experience was no different when they became parents in 2015.
Like every conscious parent who wants the best for their child, they wanted to make the best, safest choices for their daughter. They found help in unexpected places scattered across social media communities or offline events where fellow parents came together to help each other through this new life stage.
“I discovered I wasn’t alone in this journey and, more importantly, I learned how to be a parent with the help of other parents going on this journey alongside me. I was introduced to many new things like cloth diapering, new products, brands, and more,” said Vaishnavi, co-founder at The Nestery.
But the discovery of finding what you need is a broken process
When their daughter turned six months old, they realized that as working parents, they didn’t have the time or energy to browse through thousands of products on different websites or parenting communities to find a product they can trust. A simple quest for a teether became a maze of repeat, unverified listings on large e-commerce websites until they found what they were looking for, usually buried on page 5 or beyond.
From the kind of stories we read to our kids (exposure and early shaping) to what they wear or put in their mouths (toys and food), these early shopping experiences and products really count.
This experience pushed Vaishnavi into thinking about why it’s so hard for new parents to learn about what they need, where they can find it, and discover mindful brands that align with their parenting ideologies.
After two years of endless conversations with parents and meticulous market research on gaps despite existing parenting platforms, Vaishnavi realized the key is in the details that solve for ease of discovery.
In 2019, she launched The Nestery — a curated marketplace that helps parents discover safe and quality-verified maternity and children’s products by adding ‘relevant context’ to their shopping experience.
“Our strategy is to help parents find the right products for their child without the hassle of knowing what to look for. We do this by listing the right products on the platform, using our proprietary empathetic logging system to categorize products based on how parents search or their parenting stage, and providing validation from other parents they look up to using our social recommendation channel,” said Vaishnavi, co-founder at The Nestery.
The marketplace launched with just 5 brands and 25 products. She was later joined by her husband Viswanathan TS in 2020 & Aparna Vasudevan as co-founders, recently.
The Nestery participated in Rebalance Accelerator’s 2020 Cohort and were recently selected as part of the first cohort of Sequoia Spark Fellowship.
We’re thrilled to announce they have raised $500K from Rebalance Angel Community, FirstCheque, Tremis Capital, and a clutch of angel investors.
With an annualized GMV run rate of approximately $2 million, today it has 450+ brands in its portfolio across all categories in the maternity and childcare spaces and caters to women from the third trimester of pregnancy to children up to the age of 12.
“India is one of the largest markets when it comes to parenting & kids products. We want to be the destination of choice for the modern Indian parent,” added Viswanathan, co-founder at The Nestery.
The team brings a combined experience of 30 years in consumer research, finance, and operations from Deloitte, Paytm, and Bank of America Merill Lynch.
“What struck us about the team was their passion for details. We’re super excited to see Nestery declutter the process of finding products parents can truly trust,” said Aishwarya Malhi & Vikas Kumar, co-founders at Rebalance.
This investment will enable the team to supercharge growth, hire key team members, grow market awareness and build the technology to power the social recommendation engine for better discovery.
“Rebalance was the first accelerator program that we participated in when we started The Nestery. They encouraged us to allocate serious time on solidifying our market positioning and narrative. We have always had the business chops but got tremendous help in getting our story across to all our stakeholders. Another amazing thing about Rebalance is their accessible mentor network who are honest sounding boards as you build out various parts of the business,” added Vaishnavi.
Shop here [if you have a little one] today: www.thenestery.in
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