Kami is a secure mobile app that provides instant, trusted information in answer to parents’ urgent questions; followed by access to vetted health and wellness experts who provide more detailed help through video consultation, whenever parents need it. The platform intelligently supports new and expectant parents with their most important job – raising children. In this exclusive with Alaba Ayinuola of BUKZONE, Kami Co-Founder/CEO Erika Brodnock shares her entrepreneurship journey, the inspiration behind Kami, the problems her platform is solving and much more. Excerpts.
Your entrepreneurship journey.
Before Kami, I founded another platform: Karisma Kidz Ltd. I created a digital gaming platform teaching children emotional intelligence, and I’ve been interested in supporting families’ mental health for some time. I even took Karisma Kidz to Dragon’s Den for investment, although I was unfortunately unsuccessful. Despite this setback, I eventually saw Karisma Kidz preloaded to a total of 15 million devices, which motivated me to continue my entrepreneurial journey and focus on family wellbeing. After the success of Karisma Kidz, I set out to create Kami.
About Kami and what it tends to achieve.
Kami is a digital coaching platform for parents. Kami provides instant, reliable, and judgement-free personalised guidance and 1-1 support for navigating family planning, pregnancy, parenting, returning to work, and beyond. Organisations who sign up to Kami provide their employees access to instant answers to their urgent questions and teleconsultations with parental and wellbeing consultants, as well as a library of resources to keep their minds healthy.
The inspiration behind Kami and how it started.
I was inspired to create Kami when, upon returning from maternity leave after the birth of my youngest child, I was ousted by my employer, who had pitted me against the woman who had been my maternity cover. Alongside suffering from postpartum depression, I realised that there wasn’t enough personalised support out there for parents who were in the same situation I was in.
After this, I began to freelance as a Parenting Support Officer and then started to work for Lambeth Council. I developed a passion for helping parents and children navigate the challenges of parenthood, which is what eventually led me to found Kami alongside my co-founders Helen Yannakoudakis and Jacob Herandi.
Challenges and how you’re navigating through.
Creating a parental support platform doesn’t come without its fair share of challenges. We know that we’re not the only parent resource out there, but that only makes us more determined to provide the best service out there. We’re set apart from competitors because we’re the only platform using sentiment detection and emotion deeptech to aid our parent support.
We’re also dedicated to providing personalised support, which is something that a lot of other platforms aren’t doing. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution to parenting, which is why we’re determined to overcome the challenges of an oversaturated market.
Product acceptability by parents.
Parents seem really receptive to our product. Alongside our platform, I present seminars to parents at companies, using my experience as a parenting coach to guide other working parents on their journey. We’ve had great feedback from organisations like J.P. Morgan and Microsoft and we can see that the work we’re doing is already having a positive impact on parents.
Impact of Kami on parenting.
In a post-pandemic world, parents are struggling more than ever. It takes them an average of 4 hours of Google searching every time they have a question about their parenting. Kami alleviates that 4-hour Google search. In doing so, we help reduce stress, confusion, and conflicted feelings that parents may be struggling with, supporting them across their whole journey.
Our ambition is for Kami to become the brand synonymous with support for stress management among modern parents globally. We want to empower as many people as possible throughout their parental journey and address the lack of perinatal mental health support available.
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