Alemeno is an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven platform that uses “gamification’ to motivate children to eat nutritious food.
Alemeno’s co-founders Deepak Gaikwad and Shubham Jain say they are on a mission to create a generation of healthy children and make mealtimes nutritious and effortless for parents.
In the beginning…
Deepak Gaikwad, a 23 -year-old IIT Kharagpur graduate in Ocean Engineering and Naval Architecture, spent his first two years designing ships for the Indian Navy, after completing his education in 2010. However, the startup bug bit and Gaikwad resigned from his job and started up ‘SmashReport’, which failed miserably. Gaikwad then decided to gain some experience by working for a startup. Jain, a BTech in Biotechnology and MS in Computational Biology, worked as a data scientist in several companies before starting up Alemeno.
Says Gaikwad, “I joined Internshala which aspired to become a leading internship platform. They wanted to create something to monetise and we experimented a lot. It was then I realised that online learning is what children are attracted to. I learned a lot then and after five years left the startup to join WhiteHat Jr. I shared a flat in Gurgaon with Jain and soon realised we had good understanding of complementary skills and solving problems.”
Early signs
With his experience working for the younger population’s online education, Gaikwad fundamentally believed that e-learning will change everything. Gaikwad and Jain discussed several ideas.
Says Gaikwad, “I thought that e-learning platforms would be about enhancing concentration, physical health, learning basics of communication, but I was surprised that children as young as five-years old were being taught coding. Indian parents were happy to pay ₹30,000 to ₹40,000 after completing a trial class. Second, disruptive products which were launched for working professionals had started to penetrate the younger population and parents were ok with the exposure of gadgets and technology to their kids. This segment is open and I believed that various things could happen here.”
“Back then there was a lot of talk about healthy food, being physically and mentally fit, not being anxious. We read that there are three things important for a child to be healthy –eat well, sleep well and exercise. We asked 100 parents about their biggest challenge while feeding their child. We had given them options like they don’t have time, it’s expensive to provide healthy food, they don’t have information about what nutritious food to give and they have to convince the child to eat. The highest and consistent rating received in the small survey was parents found it difficult to convince their children while eating. We got our direction and we researched what is called ‘picky or fussy-eating habits’ in children,” Gaikwad said.
Workshop success
Jain and Gaikwad decided to build a solution to solve this problem of picky eating habits in children. Since the lockdown was announced at the time, they decided to conduct an online summer camp and conduct various engaging activities for kids.
Elaborating more on the workshop, Gaikwad said, “It was a two-week camp in which 100 parents participated. We educated children about healthy eating habits. The children responded positively, however, it did not reflect in their actual behaviour. It was during a painting activity that children were made to draw a baby dinosaur and they were told that this dinosaur will grow if they eat fruits and vegetables every day. So, parents used to remind their children about the dinosaur’s growth and the children started eating fruits and vegetables regularly. In response, we sent them images of a grown-up dinosaur. When we compiled the results after the workshop, children were showing about 50 per cent jump in healthy food eating habits.”
Prototype
Delighted over the results Gaikwad started to read more about gamification and its applications. Jain said, “I was sure that if we want to solve this problem on scale then it has to be tech-based solution. Gaikwad was also sure of this idea and we started brainstorming about the ways in which the product could be built, and what are the technologies that could be used. In November 2020, we decided to make an app which the children can see, and into which their parents can easily input the data.”
“I took a sabbatical from my job in January 2021 and we started building the website and basic application. I was working as a developer initially and Gaikwad was working as a product manager. We hired one UI/UX intern. In April we ended up with the first version of application. We started running basic advertisements on social networks and we got people onto the app,” Jain said.
“Since then, our strategy has been that we are bringing about 100 to 300 parents every month to use the application. We take feedback from them and implement some new ideas. With every iteration we bring on 100 more to the app and we see if there is an improvement,” he added.
In the money
Says Jain, “We started with the paid version of the application in October 2021. In these two months we have got 20 paying customers. In the premium plan too, we give 20 to 25 days of using the application for free. After the free trial period is over, users have to pay first. We don’t force or nudge parents to avail the premium plan. They can continue using our free version of application.”
“Parents paying ₹400 to Rs900 for the application is a very strong validation for us. In India, two to three per cent of users of any app are paid customers and that is considered to be a good number. In our case, more 1,200 users have installed our application so far and about 20 of them have paid. Now it’s matter of how we scale it up,” he stated.
After getting good response for their app, Jain and Gaikwad started applying for grants and looking for external funding. Sharing their experience with investors, Jain said, “So far we have bootstrapped and invested ₹8 lakh. We applied for the Startup India Seed Fund through which we got a grant of ₹10 lakh. We will spend the grant money in the next four months and we expect to reach our target of 10,000 users using this grant.”
“Meanwhile, we also got in touch with some investors, but they say ‘give us some more validation’. Investors are wary about whether parents will be immediately convinced to pay for an app which helps children just to eat food. They say numbers at scale would give them the confidence to invest money. Some have asked us to increase our subscription numbers up to 10,000 and paid customers from 20 to 200. Investors feel that those numbers will be interesting to look at. That’s what we are chasing. Once we can show that we are a two- or three-million-dollar value company then we will be able to raise $500K,” explained Jain.
The strategy to scale
When asked about their strategy to scale up, Gaikwad said, “At present we are getting a decent number of users and engagement. I am confident that our customer acquisition cost would come down to less than ₹10 in near future. The network effect will also come into play as more parents will know about it. We are experimenting with a small model of up to 5,000 users and only focussing on Pune, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. We have hardly covered 0.1 per cent of our target group users in these four cities. After acquiring the customers, making them more engaged is the second step. We are continuously improving our free and premium business model. We will soon increase our average ticket price and lifetime value (LTV) and we are confident that we will become unit positive in the next two to three months.”
User acquisition
Using his experience in marketing at the previous companies, Gaikwad has figured a way of acquiring users through Facebook ads. “We are acquiring a user for about ₹30 from Facebook,” he said.
Jain said, “On Facebook, if a parent sees our app, about 90 per cent of them end up installing the app. This is very high conversion rate for any product.”
“We are at a stage where about 30 per cent of them end up becoming active users of the application and about 5 to 6 per cent of users end up paying. Network effects have started kicking in a lot now. We do tell parents that they will get one-month free subscription for each referral download. Even without any such incentive, 10 to 15 per cent of our users are now through referral,” informed Jain.
Gaikwad also claims that they will not show ads to children on their app. “We were very clear while building the product that we don’t want to show them ads and we don’t want to monetise them. We don’t like the advertising model of social network companies where the user becomes the product,” stated Gaikwad.
Future plans
Gaikwad believes that users tell you how and in which direction the product should go. “We are continuously assessing the overall user experience and their feedback. We are able to gather some directions parents are giving to us while going ahead. We are getting queries about getting a nutritionist appointment online through our app, nutritional information and what healthy food should be given to children and how to make kids eat on their own.”
“At present there is no connection between the parents and the child psychologist or nutritionist directly. We plan to introduce it at later stage. The consultation add on would be entirely online and through our app,” he added.
“We don’t want to build anything which might be addictive or harmful in the long run and hence we have medical experts on our advisory panel including Dr Krishna Dutt, a child psychologist and professor at St George Medical College in Lucknow. Dr Dutt runs an organisation called Asmita, which works for children with attention deficit disorder. He advises us to set every step in the product,” stated Gaikwad.
Fine print
Officially registered in Thane the Alemeno safety net is that the firm only recommends (and show images of) fruits and vegetables as per WHO and government guidelines. “We don’t suggest or recommend any specific fruit or vegetable to eat. However, in case of allergy to certain products like peanuts, parents are advised to consult their own doctors or nutritionist. We will be putting a disclaimer about this on the app when the user subscribes. In future, we may add a feature asking parents about any allergy to their kids and then avoid showing those products to the particular user,” says Gaikwad.
“The Alemeno gamification gives kids a sense of achievement in doing things beyond ordinary such as helping animals grow and saving the earth. It makes regular mealtime fun. The other thing that works for such gameplay is that it allows self-determination with regard to what to eat. Children learn about healthy food through small nudges and through exploration which is satisfying for their curiosity,” says – Dr Krishna Dutt, child psychologist and professor at St George Medical College in Lucknow. As for the use of smartphones, Dr Dutt adds, “Technology is a tool and its usage by children is inevitable; we should ensure this tool is used properly and for the right reasons.”
Credit: Source link
