BusinessWire India
Bangalore (Karnataka) [India], September 17: Kiddo, the category-focused quick-commerce app for baby care that embeds life-stage intelligence into the shopping experience for young parents, has raised its pre-seed round of 12.5 Crs led by Campus Fund and a clutch of strategic angels. The investment will support customer acquisition, dark store expansion across Delhi NCR, technology and product development, and team building as Kiddo scales to become the default platform for baby-care purchases in urban India.
Founded by Ankit Kawatra (MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business, 2023), Kiddo addresses a core parental problem: the lack of fast, reliable ways to purchase age-appropriate items with confidence at the moment of need. Previous to his MBA from Stanford, Ankit founded Feeding India, the country’s first organised food-recovery network for children. He scaled it to 85+ cities and a community of 21,500+ volunteers before its acquisition by Zomato in 2019 - the first acquisition of a nonprofit in India. Post-acquisition, he served as Director at Zomato, leading operations to deliver over 150 million meals across 190 cities through COVID and up to Zomato’s IPO.
"Kiddo is building a holistic ecosystem for parents, starting with the vertical quick-commerce layer for India's $31 billion baby care market - solving the deep, anxiety-ridden chaos of early parenthood that horizontal players simply cannot address," said Richa Bajpai, Founder & CEO of Campus Fund. "Ankit is a founder who puts the customer first, with deep operational experience scaling companies from zero to one. His personal experience as a parent of two toddlers gives him an authentic understanding of the problem. We're excited to back a team that is capturing the emotional trust that horizontal giants cannot buy."
India’s baby care market reached $31 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach $56 billion by 2029, growing at a CAGR of 13 - 14%. A significant portion of this industry remains unorganised, with existing quick-commerce players offering limited relevant SKUs for parents. Urban Indian parents are increasingly prioritising quality, safety, and convenience over legacy brand names, creating a massive opportunity for a curated, vertical platform. Approximately 65% of FirstCry’s revenues already come from own and white-label brands, signalling that the market is ready for new entrants who compete on product value rather than established brand equity.
Kiddo differentiates through three reinforcing moats: habit-building triggers, age-based curation, and a community-led growth engine.
“Today, we’re getting hundreds of types of chips and sodas in minutes, yet the sleep-deprived young mothers and fathers in Tier 1 India have to rely on multiple platforms that take days to serve them. These were never built for them,” said Ankit Kawatra, Founder and CEO of Kiddo. “Kiddo’s mission is to help young parents looking to get access to “better” products for their child and fast. We’ve seen new discount platforms come up that offer faster deliveries, but none is truly focussing on curation. Campus Fund’s backing validates our vision of becoming the default platform for every Indian parent.”
Since launch, Kiddo has curated over 30,000+ SKUs across essentials, fashion, and a blended gross margin significantly higher than the typical of horizontal grocery quick-commerce. Kiddo targets parents with high household incomes, starting with Delhi-NCR, and plans to expand to multiple dark stores by year end.
Kiddo joins Campus Fund’s growing portfolio of ventures transforming India’s consumer landscape, driven by exceptional young founders building category-defining platforms that address fundamental gaps in how urban India shops, parents, and lives.
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Baby Care Quick-Commerce Startup Kiddo, Raises Pre-seed Round of 12.5 Cr Led by Campus Fund
