Feature
Kidday captures entire childhoods
Traditional baby journals include photos and scribbled memories of a child’s growth, but they are difficult to share. Finnish company Muntius wants its service Kidday to become a digital home for childhood tales.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… Every day is a Kidday for Muntius co-founders Juho Nieminen and Shamil Seifulla. However, they’re not the only ones who want to keep track of what their children are up to; grandparents, godparents, uncles, aunts and the rest are all keen to hear how the little ones are doing.
“Some wanted to get photos over WhatsApp, to some I had to email them and some wanted updates in text messages,” Nieminen explains. “It was a lot of work, and in the end the images drown in a sea of photos of whatever else has been sent.”
Nieminen and Seifulla decided to tackle the challenge by creating a platform on which parents could share photos with the people they choose – family and friends – safely and conveniently at one go. Unlike general services, such as Facebook or Instagram, Kidday is customised for families with children.
“On Kidday, families can record the child’s overall development from weight to shoe size and first words,” Nieminen tells. “It’s like a digital version of a baby journal that other family members can comment on to leave their mark in the child’s story.”
The contents of the journal can also be printed and turned into a book, and photo prints and collages are easy to create.
Sharing and storing are caring
Kidday’s cloud service ensures that the photos won’t be lost even if devices break or if physical albums disappear. The free version of the service includes limited storage space, but if users go premium there’s not restriction as to how much can be stored.
The owners of the account can choose who has access to the documents, and as the child grows up the content can be passed onto him or her as a gift.
“Our slogan is that every moment with your child is priceless,” Nieminen notes. “That’s why Kidday’s aim is to enable families to store and share those moments with others, and eventually with the children themselves.”
The company’s goal is nothing less than to become the number one digital baby journal in the world. However, this isn’t the only plan for Kiddays: on top of the product itself, Nieminen and Seifulla want to grow the site to become an online service platform and marketplace for families.
“We’ve partnered with experts across various fields who produce information and materials for families,” Nieminen says. “I know from experience that as a new parent, there are all kinds of opinions out there and you never know who to trust. We want to provide reliable, science-based information.”
Multiple revenues streams in mind
In addition to offering expertise and support, Kidday is creating a marketplace for family products, giving companies an opportunity to target their advertising based on big data and artificial intelligence. Nieminen points out that this also helps families find the right products at the right time. The anonymous data Kidday collects will be enriched by artificial intelligence, creating yet another revenue stream for the company.
Investors have been impressed: currently, Muntius has over 100 owners as well as an experienced team of advisors. The service is being piloted in Finland, and Nieminen says the team is carefully listening to customer feedback to ensure Kidday really delivers its promise of being the best of its kind. The first foreign market the company is stepping into will be the UK, from where Nieminen hopes to see Kidday spread to other English-speaking regions.
The ultimate goals are China and the US, where the huge volume of potential users make the market particularly appealing to the company. There are ongoing negotiations with potential partners in both.
Yet there’s plenty more where that came from.
“We’ve validated a total of almost 50 countries where Kidday has significant potential,” he says. “After entering the big markets, we’re expecting the revenue stream to grow exponentially.”