Nowadays, the internet has made it easier for promotions and deals specifically curated to various audiences. With just one click, it’s simple for people to have the all types of deals in the palm of their hands that would ripe for the picking.
There have been deals sites that have included offerings for the little ‘uns, but one startup took a look at the young crowd and decided to focus just on them.
Deals For The Children
Kidxy is a new Malaysian startup where parents can discover and book activities for their children through one platform at a discounted rate.
The idea started when one of the co-founders, Mien Dee, noticed that friends and family members around would comment on how it was a bit tricky to know the right place to send their children for activities. This is mainly because they weren’t even aware of what was around or available.
They could search online, but they’d come up with a whole list of activities and wouldn’t even know how to start choosing what to go for.
Parents would instead use the typical traditional method of asking around to friends or family, going off recommendations to send their kids to places.
“Together with my 2 other founding partners, we thought a deals platform for kids’ activities would be a good idea to help parents solve this problem and bring together vendor partners, to help them gain more revenue as well,” said Mien Dee to Vulcan Post.
What is also true is that raising a child in Malaysia isn’t exactly affordable, with estimated numbers ranging from RM400,000 to RM1.1 million in expenses for one child. So Kidxy aims to ease the financial burdens for parents by offering deals for children.
Many Deals, One Platform
The team curates the activities on Kidxy based on these following criteria:
- Has an actual physical space
- Has an established user base or set track record
- Unique for its kind and differs from the norm
- Accessible and located in a convenient location (usually in a mall or near a mall)
- Fits a certain age range for the children
To make things more user-friendly, filters are available to allow parents to sort activities out by category, location and price.
The process from choosing an activity to payment is kept to a minimal number of clicks, which is a deliberate choice by the team.
“We wanted to make sure that the user activity is seamless. Some of our users are less tech-savvy, so we simplified the process,” said Mien Dee.
Currently, Kidxy only lists activities within the Klang Valley area but they plan on expanding to other areas in Malaysia soon. According to Kidxy, there have been requests from Johor and Penang so that may be their next target.
There are two ways for parents to book an activity.
- ‘Pay As You Go’, a one-off payment.
- A subscription deal where 10 credits costs RM99. The credits can be used anytime up to 3 months and the cost is discounted compared to the first option.
Different activities require different amount of credits so if parents opt for that, they’ll need to check the type of plan they’re subscribed to before making any purchase.
The plans are flexible and parents can cancel this monthly subscription so long as it’s done within 3 days before the cycle renews. Each plan is tagged to one child so after each booking, any relevant details can be immediately sent to the vendors. These include allergies or any medic alerts, and saves the parents from having to fill up a new form with every activity they register for.
Activities are updated according to the vendors and parents can start seeing the schedule from 3 months up to a week before the activity date. After each booking, parents will get an email confirmation which needs to be presented when the child attends the activity.
“Parents can switch or cancel any activity as long as it is within 24 hours of booking time and there will not be any penalty fee incurred as we want to make this as flexible as possible for parents,” said Mien Dee.
If parents miss the activity slot that has passed the 24-hour window due to personal circumstances, Kidxy will discuss with the vendor on the possibilities of a refund or credit for rebooking.
“We had customers who booked the wrong thing or wanted to go to the place again. So we discussed with the vendors and they were willing to cancel/re-book them at Kidxy rates.”
“In the end, we want to make sure that parents have the convenience of choice that is acceptable to the vendors and Kidxy. It has to be a win-win between us all,” said Mien Dee.
Since their launch in January of this year, Kidxy has almost 3000 subscribers with 40 vendor partners listed on their website.
Bringing In Their Partners
Companies with services catering to children can make use of Kidxy too. Right now, listings are completely free. Kidxy partners can determine what kinds of activities they want to list, the timing and if there’s a minimum enrolment requirement for a class, they will receive a notification when that has been met.
Kidxy monetises by getting a sum based on the number of successful bookings per vendor, in exchange for the activity listing.
Besides listing the activities individually, partners can opt to have the deals bundled together in packages which are more attractive for the parents.
Their future goals consist of providing more services involving children to help make things more convenient for parents.
“For example, we have partnered with Riding Pink to organise transport to and from school/home/activities at a discounted rate for parents who purchase an activity with Kidxy. We are also working on a new offering called Kidxy Parties where parents can organise birthday parties leveraging on our vendor’s locations,” said Mien Dee.
Venues that come together with event management packages are not new, but Kidxy hopes to stand out by only recruiting vendors whose physical spaces are specifically built for children and tagged with an activity, making it easier for parents to organise parties at their location.
Keeping Up With The Times
In this day of modern tech, most parents are inseparable from their mobile phones, and vendors have rolled with that. Tuition classes and after-school activities are usually handled through WhatsApp or certain apps.
We thought Kidxy lacking a mobile app would affect their business since it might limit their accessibility, but the team had this to say:
“Based on our stats, a majority of our bookings are already done on mobile. Our website is mobile-friendly, and we’ve found that most people are happy to access us through that.”
Mien Dee also shared that there are talks of a mobile app version of Kidxy. She admits that there are positives and negatives to consider (after all, not everyone wants to clutter their phone up with another app), but if they can bring value to the users through the app (e.g. app-exclusive notifications of discounts), then it could work for the better.
The potential market is big for Kidxy, with nearly 30% of our 30 million population comprising of children. So all they really need to do is find the right means of tapping into this market to create a win-win situation where parents can get cheaper deals and vendors can obtain more patrons from their platform.
However, they do face the risk of running into some competitors. For example, what’s to stop any other deal-offering platform on the market now from diversifying and honing into the lucrative kids-centric market?
Kidxy believes this isn’t much of a concern considering how their entire platform focuses solely on activities that strengthen the growth and learning abilities of children from the age of 0 to 17 years. So they will have a wider variety that is catered only for a specific audience which parents and vendors would both appreciate.
Feature Image Credit: Kidxy