Funding for mom and baby care start-ups on the decline

While mom and baby care start-ups were booming last year, this year there seems to be a slowdown. The number of mom and baby care start-ups had reached its peak in 2015 with founding of 351 companies, this has now dropped to 75 mom and baby care start-ups coming up till August 2016, according to a Tracxn report.

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The total funding for mom and baby care report has dropped to $857 million with only 85 deals till date in 2016 from $1.4 billion from 156 deals in 2015.

A majority of the funding for the mom and baby care start-ups has been from seed funding, followed by early stage funding and late stage funding. Currently, in 2016 there has been 42 seed funding deals, followed by 27 early stage funding deals and 6 late stage funding deals.

While total late stage funding amounted to a high $842 million in 2015 it has now declined to $279 million. Similarly, early stage funding which accounted for $279 million in 2015 had declined to $97 million in 2016 (year to date).

The most active investor in the mom and baby care start-ups is 500 Startups which has invested in 21 start-ups in this category. Techstars has invested in 10 start-ups which include Owlet Baby Care and Hullabalu, while Wayra has invested in 8 start-ups. Accel Partners has invested in 5 mom and baby care start-ups till now.

A majority of the funding for mom and baby care start-ups has been in the commerce category, which amounts to $2.2 billion. It is followed by parenting start-ups which attracted a total of $990 million and education has attracted funding of $510 million.

The highest funding in this segment is the company Wzhouhui in Shenzhen, China which got $278 million in 2013.