CHENNAI: Parentcircle, a web-portal that aims to be the next big thing among knowledge-sharing aggregate platforms, was formally launched by cricketer VVS Laxman and his wife Sailaja in the city, on Wednesday. “When you try a regular google search for something like ‘parenting advice’, more than 102 million results pop up, and your specific desires result might very well end up in the 10th or even 50th page. Parentcircle collates that information for you at the click of a button,” says the founder and managing director Nalina Ramalakshmi. She adds India-specific results are very important when researching under different themes like wellness, behaviour, intellectual issues etc. For example, when trying to figure out the importance of Vitamin D, US-centric health articles which tend to show up more frequently in our search results tell one to do things like drink Vitamin-D fortified milk, wear adequate sunblock, and stay indoors. But as explained by Dr Madhu Purushotaman to Nalina, the advice does not fit the Indian context where the type of milk is unavailable and Indians need outdoor Vitamin-D as their skin type largely varies from that of their Western counterparts. There is also the facility to follow or directly message an expert catering to one’s specific request or needs on the website.
The users — be it parents, schools or organisations — can create interactive multimedia (image, video, pdf etc) based clipboards on several subjects under the array of available topics and share it within a community or on social media. The option to source outside information and create micro-communities to collate and share it, is what the founder says is the USP of Parentcircle. “Think of it as an Indian-version of Pinterest, but one which is solely devoted to aiding parenting,” Parentcircle has 50 odd educational institutions and 20 knowledge partners.
Nalina also expressed the intent to launch it in other cities like Bangalore, Pune and Delhi in the near future and coordinate with local resource partners. The App version was also launched on Android and iOs platforms, at the event.