By Patricia B. Mirasol, Multimedia Producer
MANILA-BASED parenting platform Edamama wants to capitalize on the country’s underserved market as it continues to build an online-to-offline retail experience for its target market.
“We really want to be where the customer is, and 90% of retail in the Philippines today is still offline, so our goal is really to build the leading omnichannel in the country,” Bela Gupta D’Souza, one of Edamama’s founders, said in an interview on Aug. 1.
The company started in May 2020 as an online platform selling third-party childcare and mother care products. It now also sells 95,000 wares including in-house brands in its four brick-and-mortar stores in Manila, with another one set to open this month.
Edamama sells online only through its app and its website to give parents a curated shopping experience, according to co-founder Nish D’Souza.
“When you go to a horizontal marketplace, you have millions of products,” he told BusinessWorld. “When you come to Edamama, that experience is curated… You can find what you need very easily, even curated down to the age and gender of your baby.”
The company, which was No. 1 out of nine Filipino startups that landed on the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch list of 2023, also has its own in-house fleet for deliveries within the capital “to have more input on the delivery experience of the customer,” he said.
The children’s apparel market in the Philippines is projected to experience grow by 1.94% from 2024-2028, according to Statista.
The Hamburg-based web portal in a separate study in April said the size of the global parenting app market is expected to surpass $900 million (P51.4 billion) by 2030.
In June, Edamama partnered with KonsultaMD to open a pilot clinic at its Ayala Malls Feliz outlet.
Mr. and Ms. D’Souza, who are parents to three children, said it could sometimes take an hour to see a pediatrician.
“Healthcare is a friction point for some parents,” Ms. D’Souza told BusinessWorld. “The parent is seeking out not just products, but also solutions and services to help simplify their parenting journey.”
“Can we help reduce the friction in accessing healthcare by integrating a healthcare clinic in our stores?”
The reality of setting up at the height of the coronavirus pandemic brought in a lot of agility, she said.
“Everybody saw that shift to online very quickly once the lockdown came into effect,” she said. “It was very easy to work with seller-partners to onboard them quickly onto the platform, given that a lot of them knew that online was the future.”
Edamama has raised $35 million from its Series A funding round, according to Mr. D’Souza.
“The Philippines is one of the biggest markets in Southeast Asia, with high fertility rates, and one of the largest under-10 and under-14 populations globally, yet the parents here are underserved in terms of affordable quality options,” he said.
“At the end of the day, when you have a market size that big, that attracts the attention of investors,” he added.
