Mother Lode

Integrating community, content and commerce, Mumbai-based startup BabyChakra aims to build a one-stop ecosystem for baby care.

- Shruti Venkatesh

One thing a new mother is short on is time, and one thing she values is trust. These were the primary insights Naiyya Saggi decided to work with when she turned entrepreneur. Saggi, 32, had worked in the healthcare space at management consulting firm McKinsey & Company from 2007 to 2009 in Mumbai. Around the same time, she saw her friends struggle to find services and guidance during their pregnancy and post delivery. And though she went on to graduate from Harvard Business School in 2010 (on two scholarships— the JN Tata Endowment and the Fulbright Scholar Program), the germ of an idea had already been sown.

It all finally came together in Baby Chakra, a website she and her childhood friend Mitesh Karia launched in 2014. The website is a one-stop communication and ‘discovery platform’ for new mothers. “Fathers are also welcome, but we are currently focussed on pregnant women and mothers with children up to the age of five, as this is a period of maximum obsession and information asymmetry,” Saggi says with a smile as she sits back with a cup of coffee in a café in Mumbai’s Lower Parel. While 70 percent of Indians live in nuclear families and 85 percent of decisions are taken by mothers in these families, they have no one to turn to for advice, she adds.