STARTUP ..... No Kidding
How a bunch of startups is reaching out to children to seed brand
awareness among its future consumers as well as to play influencers to their
parents
Well
done Doon Girls School & Dehradun Boys School! Good luck Waste Warriors,
may the force be with you! Love,“ tweet ed actor Aamir Khan on March 21.
The
“well done“ was not in reference to some academic or sporting feat: rather the
boys and girls had composed and performed a Recycling Rap: this was part of
Microsoft's Create to Inspire educational programme, conducted by a local NGO,
Waste Warriors.
Khan,
who is not very active on the microblogging site--only 371 tweets since
November 2009 when he opened his account--tweeted the video of Recy cling Rap,
highlighting the need to con serve the environment. Of Khan's 17 million-odd
Twitter fans, one is Deepak Sethi, cofounder of Delhi-based waste recycling
startup Pom Pom.
“You'll
be surprised how environmentally conscious children are today. For a product
like ours -a pick-up service for recyclable waste -children are one of the
target users. Pom Pom is growing with kids, especially because it's an
environment-friendly initiative and helps in inculcating good habits at a
younger age,“ explains Sethi.
Technology
and social media are two of the strongest influencers in today's society. And
cashing in are a handful of startups that are attempting to catch them young.
However,
this attempt to reach out to kids is not only a move to instil social values
but also a strategic step to create brand awareness.
Clean & Green
“We
met with a seven-year-old girl from Shri Ram School in New Delhi who has been
practising segregation of waste for a while but didn't have someone who took
all her segregated waste. That's when we realised that children really do care
about the future of the environment,“ says 36-year-old Sethi.
Delhi's
department of environment reported that by 2020 the Capital will need an
additional area of 28 sq km to dump 15,000 tonnes of garbage daily. Eightyfive
per cent of the city doesn't have a formal door-to-door trash pick-up system. Three
of the four stinking waste landfills are long overdue for closure and there are
no fresh landfills available to take in the current daily discard of 9,000
tonnes. When Pom Pom launched in 2015, it took upon itself the task of making
people aware of segregation and responsible disposal. Connecting with kids
became a key prong of that game plan. “Schools are stressing a lot on
environment these days. Out of the 3Rs -Reduce, Reuse and Recycle -the children
are already practising the first two. Pom Pom, which is the only trash-tocash
service, is offering them the third R: the option to recycle,“ says Sethi.
As
brand strategist Harish Bijoor explains, FMCG and consumer durables categories
are the “granddads of the game of marketing to kids which, eventually, leads to
the wallets of their parents“. This is a time-tested piece of strategy that has
every Horlicks and every Samsung doing something or the other that is
kid-related, he adds. “Now a bunch of startups are learning from these who have
been there and done that.“
Keep Them Safe
One
of these fledgling ventures is Delhi-based Leaf Wearables, which is tapping
into the young generation's incredible ability to adapt to change, coupled with
the huge influence of social media in their lives.
In
a survey conducted across 14 cities in India, a Tata Consultancy Services GenY
Study of 2014-15 revealed that today's children, between 12 and 18, are
tech-savvy, with over 72% owning smartphones and 85% having access to social
networking sites.
Leaf
Wearables, which makes smart jewellery that acts as a safety device for women,
is now working on similar products for children and senior citizens, says
cofounder Manik Mehta. The company's mission is to make one million families
safer by 2017.
“We
came across this statistic that every eight minutes a child is kidnapped in
India. When we studied the severity of the situation, we went in search of
answers. This led us to interact with kids and see what kind of solutions they
require,“ says Mehta.“Connecting with kids is a move towards understanding how
the younger generation takes to the changes happening around them. They see the
world through a very different lens,“ he adds.
Invest and Acquire
Startups
whose businesses don't have an obvious connect with kids are also seeing their
potential as influencers. Consider, for instance, InMotion BachatMitra, a
fintech venture that is striving to create a technology platform to solve the
financial, healthcare and educational problems of daily wage earners in the
country. InMotion is attempting to convince wage earners to save small amounts
every day in their bank accounts, take fair market loans and buy insurance,
pension and other financial products at a much lower cost than market.
So
where do kids come in? Well, it works like this. Long-term savings can be
triggered by children simply because the customers have hopes and ambitions for
their kids. What InMotion is attempting is an emotion al connect between the
benefits of saving and children.
Last
year, the government increased the minimum wage across the country to `160 a
day from `137. This works out to a monthly income of under `5,000 -barely
enough for a family to make ends meet. “These daily-wagers live for their kids.
They want their children to get a good education so that they do not suffer
what they have suffered. They want their kids to get a good job and put an end
to their hand-to-mouth existence,“ says Durgesh Nandan, the 26-year-old
cofounder of InMotion.
After
visiting the homes of a few autorickshaw drivers to understand their problems,
Nandan and his team chanced upon a man who wanted to send his daughter for
higher education. He needed `75,000 for that. Nandan realised that if this man
saved `100 a day, he would be able to have that amount in a little over two
years. Nandan and Chiraag Kapil, the other cofounder of InMotion, decided to
make a comic book for kids that illustrates how small savings can accumulate;
the idea, of course, is that children could play a role in influencing their
parents to save.
“We
are using our customers' kids as a tool. If the children are on board they will
motivate their parents to save money,“ says Nandan. As for InMotion's business
model, it earns its revenue from subscription charges, commissions from lenders
on each approved loan and commissions from insurers on each insurance sold.
Pester Power
If
InMotion is taking the route of subtle influencing, there are startups that are
relying on a more direct engagement with children. Consider the three-year-old
FitCircle, a chat-based fitness platform that aims to guide people to make
healthier choices and create a culture of healthy living. “We are creating a
brand focused on healthy living, eating and exercising that will impact
lifestyle for decades to come,“ says cofounder Aarti Gill.
The
number of overweight and obese people globally increased from 857 million in
1980 to 2.1 billion by 2013, which is almost one-third of the world population.
India is just behind the US and China on the list of countries with the most
number of obese people, accounting for 15% of the world's obese, or around 30
million people, according to a study by the US-based Institute for Health
Metrics and Evaluation. A hectic routine, dependence on processed foods and
lack of physical activities are contributing to an unhealthy lifestyle. And it
is as much a problem of the young as it is of adults. This is where FitCircle
comes in. “We plan to form good habits at a young age,“ says Gill. From
organising boot camps and summer camps to free fitness coaching, FitCircle
hopes to make kids aware of preventive healthcare but in a fun way.
In
Kidfluence (published in 2001), authors Beth Thompson and Anne Sutherland
classify the pester power of children into two categories: persistence and
importance. In “importance pestering“, the child rationally demands a product
by showing its benefits. It is more effective than repeated whiny pleas (or
persistent pestering) as it appeals to the parents' desire to provide the best
for their children. Clearly, some of India's youngest business ventures also
seem to believe in the power of importance pestering.
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Joyshree
Baruah & Rajiv Singh
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ET10APR16
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