Kapil Rajurkar, founder and CEO of Preschool2me
The company started out as a side project, Rajurkar said.
Rajurkar wanted to be able to keep tabs on his son at his preschool so he created an app that allowed him to connect with his son’s school.
The app is an interactive communications platform between the preschool and its teachers and the parents. It provides them with pictures, announcements and a detailed activity report at the end of the day. It also provides an archive of information that parents can search.
Preschool2me also provides a director dashboard that has time-saving tools to manage the daycare center.
In 2013, Rajurkar moved to Austin and relocated his startup Preschool2me here. His startup has also participated in the accelerator program at Capital Factory.
Today, the app is in more than 450 sites around the country and it’s in several countries around the world including Australia, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and more, Rajurkar said.
Preschool2me, based in Cedar Park, now has 11 employees and recently raised an undisclosed sum in seed stage funding.
Keshu Dubey, an investor, and serial entrepreneur.
The latest round of funding is to help Preschool2me further scale its operations and focus on sales and growth, Dubey said.
Other angel investors in the round include Jawahar Dhandapani, Sandeep Karandikar, Srinu Vemulapalli, Tarun Singhal, Tarun Sharma, Vipin Agrawal, Umad Ahmad, Vinay Arora and Saurabh Dixit.
“Most of the other investors are parents of young kids going to preschool and childcare centers. Their faith in Preshool2me further validates the need for our product” Rajurkar said.
Preschool2me works with leading brands of childcare centers in the country including Children’s Lighthouse, Goddard Schools, Kids ‘R’ Kids Learning Academy, YMCA, JCC among others.
Via email, Rajurkar answered a few more questions about his company.
Q. Who are your customers?
A. Private preschools serving children from birth to 5 years, afterschool programs and camps.
Q. Who is on your team?
Being the founder, I play multiple roles as the CEO and CIO. We have a team in place for business development and support. We have a strong board of advisors and mentors that augment our team.
Q. Why are you guys the ones to do this startup?
As a parent, I saw this need in the early childhood market. Given our understanding of the needs of the customer and technology know-how, we decided to do this startup. Working with early childhood educators and entrepreneurs drives us.
Q. What challenges do you face bringing your startup into the marketplace?
A. Early childhood educators and owners are really busy in their day to day duties. Getting time on their calendar to demonstrate how our product will change their operations and positively impact parent engagement is the toughest part of our startup.
Q. How do you acquire customers?
A. Our customer acquisition is three prong: Word of mouth, tradeshows and direct calling.
Q. What is the business model?
A, We are SaaS (Software as a Service) based product. Customers pay around $125 per month to get access to Preschool2me for unlimited teachers, classrooms, and students.
Q. What Austin resources have you found most helpful?
A. Austin has a strong eco-system of entrepreneurs, mentors, and investors. One of the reasons I moved Preschool2me to Austin was to become part of and benefit from this eco-system. For example, Capital Factory and its mentors have helped us tremendously.
Q. What has been your biggest win so far?
A. When we started back in 2013, I was not sure how we will get in front of some of the biggest franchises in the country. But in the past 4 years, our product and support have allowed us to become part of some of these large franchises. We have also been able to create partnerships with larger organizations that complement our product. To me, these are our biggest wins.
Q. What is your long-term vision?
A. Preschool2me should become the most cost-effective, easy to use and with the best customer support software in the early childhood marketplace serving more than a million children.
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