Kids need fun tools that will teach them the basic skills and habits and enable you to spend quality time with your child. Flintobox is the perfect answer to what you are looking for.
A Chennai based startup Flintobox was launched in September 2013. Flintobox is conceived as part of a series of discovery boxes for children aged 3-7 and carefully designed for Early Child Development. Every box comes with activities that’ll enable the child to create, play, explore and read about a particular theme while catering to more than 12 critical developmental areas.
The Toy Makers
Flinto was founded by three extremely talented persons – Arunprasad Dhurairaj, Vjaybabu Gandhi and Shreenidhi S P. Arun, an MBA graduate from Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth), strongly believes that the existing early education system for children needs an upgrade and is passionate about bringing those changes himself. His professional experience includes an M&A specialist role at Samsung Korea and roles at VC funds investing in early stage US healthcare startups. He also brings with him a strong background in product management.
Being a dad to a five year old is no easy task and this made Vijay the key catalyst behind the idea of Flintobox. His passion for early learning and background in technology provides Flintobox the edge that makes it fun and educational for children. He is the architect for Flintobox’s e-commerce platform and envisages the technology to bring alive the character Flinto on mobile apps and
games.
Shreenidhi is the techie behind the entire plot. He has a passion for startups and was the the technology head at Zinghopper, India’s leading ride sharing platform. Prior to that, Shreenidhi was part of technology teams at Societe General and TCS. Shreenidhi is instrumental in building a robust and scalable subscription commerce platform at Flintobox, and provides technical & architectural leadership for the product team on web and mobile application.
The Tale Behind the Start
A very enthusiastic and energetic Arun shares his experience about Flintobox.
The story of Flintobox is that of a young parent striving to find the best way to nurture his kid’s creativity and curiosity, while keeping up with a busy life. The idea came to them when Vijay raised concern about his 5-year old son Aadhav, spending a disproportionate amount of time on TV and mobile phones.
The first six years of a child’s life is very important where 90% of the development of the brain occurs. As with any busy parent, Vijay was pressed for the time to ensure his child was engaged in meaningful and purposeful activities.
“This is when we thought it would be a great service if someone could curate new activities and ideas which would engage kids positively, at home, away from TV, and does not need the parent’s constant supervision. Since we couldn’t find anyone doing it professionally, we figured that we should probably do it, so that other parents and children would benefit,” says Arun.
Their next step was to bring in people with expertise in child development, game design and education to build the first prototype, which was then tested with 60 plus parents and children from nearby apartments. The parents found that this improved their interaction with their child and led to better engagement. This encouraged the team to take a plunge to build Flintobox as a company. Even today, after every box is created, they test the prototype in play schools where they monitor the engagement and only upon its success does it take shape as the final product.
The toys in the box:
Flinto provides activity boxes for children between the age group of 2 to 8 years. Early experiences and positive interactions during this age determine the overall development of children for years to come. Each box is loaded with creative and explorative activities to make learning fun for the child. These are hands-on activities that will take the child away from the TV and hook them onto meaningful and engaging activities.
Research shows that children need to be actively engaged in 12 different areas for a holistic development However, in these busy days with nuclear families, parents don’t have the time to ensure that their child is engaged effectively. And this constraint makes children resort to the easy way of watching TV.
Flintobox solves this problem for parents by providing a perfect fun discovery box that inspires children to explore and feed their curiosity for new things every month. Parents will receive, right
at their doorstep, a carefully curated and designed set of activities based on fresh themes every month. Each box contains different activities that cover 12 development areas including fine motor,
cognitive and gross motor, creativity, exploration, language, and social skills through fun activities.
“We use technology extensively in our business,” says Arun. From the moment an order is placed till the time the subscription ends, technology serves as the backbone for their operation. They
also have their own android app that is used to distribute digital content. Technology makes order management, order processing, customer support, analysis and reporting, marketing, customer engagement and financial accounting real time and up to date.
Challenges faced and milestones achieved
In the beginning, acceptance of a product such as Flintobox was very low. It was a new and unique concept. There was less awareness about the product and its benefits for children. The first and main challenge faced was to educate customers on the need for early learning tools and why a child needs to be engaged before the age of 8. Arun claims that they are still combating this challenge.
Flintobox has its share of awards and accolades to boast about. Flintobox was awarded the ‘Coolest Startup of 2014’ by Business Today, the ‘Best Education Startup of 2014’ by Confederation of
Indian Industries (CII), the Wharton India Startup Competition 2015 and also the best subscription boxes of 2014 by Kidstoppress.
Piggybank plannings:
The finances for Flinotbox are mainly contributed by investors. “We were part of a GSF accelerator when we started. The strong network and passionate investors helped us raise the next round.”
Arun says.
Indian Market and Future Plans
India has a large number of children between the age group of 2 and 8 in the urban and semi urban cities. However, this segment’s needs are hugely underserved. The trio sees a huge market
opportunityto become a pioneer in the area of Early Child Development in India. If taken in an economic scale this would translate to $ 2 billion in India alone. Flitobox has very strong interest in the Middle East and other countries of South East Asia, where parents give huge importance to education. They aim to make these expansions in the next 12 to 18 months.
According to Arun, being an entrepreneur is no easy task. He has some wise words for budding entrepreneurs. “It will take double the estimated time to break even or raise finance. So, be prepared with your personal financial situations’, signs off Arun .
Text: Nima Rahul Photos: Flintobox.com