Vijay Anand, Co-Founder & CEO is a Management graduate and has rich experience in building startup internet businesses across multiple domains like travel, ecommerce, automotive verticals in India and US
He is deeply passionate about early child development and believes that it’s the best investment that one can ever make to make for a future with healthy, smart and happy kids!
Vijay Anand, Founder Smart Parenting, in an email interaction with Ekta Srivastava, Health Technology.in
What is smart parenting?
‘Smart parenting’ is the newest realm of millennial parents who strive to make optimum usage of technology in bringing up their kids, to help them develop the best way possible. It’s a fact that only 50% of the children end up developing to their fullest potential during the critical early years, Parentlane is precisely trying to bridge this huge gap using technology and a vibrant community.
Ideally, a smart parent would categorically aim for the following:
a) He would like to be informed about his child at finger tips, starting from the kid’s day to day growth and development to where and why(if) is the child lagging behind in something.
b) He wouldn’t want to waste time going through oodles of information on the internet, and would seek for a more objective form of resource to gather information about his child.
c) He would look out for only ”personalized” information relevant to only his child, and not dig into overflowing information, which focuses on children ”as a whole” classified by a certain age group.
d) He would want to spot development issues in his child in a jiffy and would also want quick solutions to fix the problem.
e) He would know that ”age” is not the only factor based on which he should compare his child’s development to other kids of that age.
f) He would want validation of every fact relating to his child’s development, be it habits, milestones, or delays, with real life instances of other kids in the peer group
In this generation of innovation & technology, what is actually stopping new age parents from making the best of technology and reaching the ‘smart parent’ milestone?
Technology is reaching newer heights every day, and with that the flow of information too is increasing in abundance. As they say, too much of anything is never good and also the fact that ”too many cooks spoil the broth,” that’s exactly what’s stopping new age parents from reaching the ‘smart parent’ milestone.
There are plethora of websites and overflow of information on the web as on today, and all of it cover aspects of child development in a one-way mode, wherein content is pushed to the parents, and then it is the parents’ job to dig from the abundance what might be actually relevant for their child. And the moment they start this deep-digging of information, they take a step back on the bridge to achieve the smart parent milestone.
Please tell us more about GrowthCheck?
– GrowthCheck in a nutshell is the brand new feature on the Parentlane App which allows every smart parent to track their child’s daily growth & development simply by routine observation, and with that they can know whether the child is meeting development goals on time and if not, then what things can help strengthen their problem areas. GrowthCheck studies every day to day development aspect of each child and molds the interface of the app accordingly with data science and adaptive algorithm, wherein you can be rest assured that you get information and solutions that’s relevant to only your child.
What are the different features that it offers?
- In Depth Coverage
Track overall development of brain, physical, social and emotional growth.
- Health & Wellness Check
Track Neuro, Muscular, Sensory health and overall wellness
- Red Alerts
Compare your child’s progress against benchmarks and real insights from Parentlane kids
Get Instant alerts on early symptoms of development delays and disorders
- Get Recommendations
Get Personalize recommendation to improve weaker areas.
Do you think India has adequate technology usage and adoption in the education sector? What more can be done in your opinion?
-The technology usage and adoption prospects in the educational sector in India is growing day by day, yet the desirable outcome of it is far away. The fundamental way of bridging this gap is by adhering to ways of ”personalized’ education, with ”personalized” technology, since each child is different and hence their ways of learning, unlearning, relearning too will be different. The process has to start from early childhood of the kids, with their parents adhering to smart parenting, adopting approaches that focus on personalized form of development for their child and this has to continue with the child’s educational journey as well.
Adoption of technology, what challenges did you face?
Although we believe that the transformation isn’t easy, it has been observed through real life instances that in the long run, learning through technology is what bridges the gap better between a child and education.
