Parentune Story: Handycam & Tripod

Background: I was recently invited by BWDisrupt to share the parentune story. I was to share about how parentune became a trusted support for parents. I had a good 10 minutes to share 3 crisp stories from our journey. Handycam & Tripod is one of those 3 stories shared on 27th Sep'18.

The year was 2012, I had spent close to 5 years working in the Child Development & Education industry. In my several interactions with parents, I learnt about the new-age challenges Urban parents were facing then. These were new, unclear challenges emerging from a changing societal landscape & urbanization. They were looking for support to raise their child. Being in smaller/nuclear families and raising a child is challenging and each parent wants to do what was right for their child. I was compelled to solve this.

This was also the conception stage for parentune. This was the point in our journey when we needed to understand the problem in depth, and so I started meeting parents for the research. My challenge was that while I interacted & listened to parents; it was difficult to take notes to look at later. Paper-pen wasn’t helping much and I was struggling to analyze and learn from these interactions, to find insights out of them. So, I started seeking permission from parents to record the conversations. Through this research phase, I went from one parent’s place to the next, with a Handycam & a Tripod. I did this for 6 weeks, travelled 4 cities, met close to 2000 parents-1X1 or in groups. I used to record these videos and then look back at them the same evening from a recency perspective. The idea was to crystallize these into key insights.

One evening, I was looking at the recorded videos & I noted something interesting, I had missed taking note of it during the interaction. I had asked a question to a parents' group, “Do you find help from friends on social media” and a mom was saying something very important, which I had missed taking note of during the interaction. She said, “I would never share any issues about my child in social media sites….why would I? in fact I would not even share my child’s picture in her school uniform or places we go regularly to, from a safety POV.” Since this was a group, I missed taking a note of this, but now I was curious. I called the mom immediately and we spoke about it. She shared, “While I don’t have much time, and I am busy, I wish I could stay connected with like minded parents & that ways, we could help each other.” Like this I had many more such conversations and interactions in those initial 44 days.

We got 3 insights & a watch-out through these 44 days.

1. Parents trust like minded parents for tried & tested advice.
2. Parents are looking for specific solution & advice relevant to their child’s age & life-stage. Generalization is a no-go.
3. For somethings, parents will only trust an Expert. E.g. health, education, child psychology

And while parents look for support, they are not looking for a report card.

There it was, our Watch Out - No Judgement!

These key insights have become more relevant and pervasive with each passing day. And while I look back today, I feel that this research phase got us the deep conviction as a team to be at it, to create the support parents missed.

I shall soon share the other 2 stories with you. Have you got any early stage experiences in your journey while solving a problem? Please do share, would love to know.