57. Koru Kids

Founder: Rachel Carrell
Founded: March 2016 (launched July 2016)
Website: www.korukids.co.uk

According to mother of two Rachel Carrell, the childcare industry is broken.

The options available to parents are expensive, inflexible and of a patchy and unpredictable quality – the search for a provider that meets their needs can be “exhausting and emotional”.

Enter Koru Kids, Rachel Carrell’s start-up solution to London parents’ childcare woes.

A key USP, Koru Kids makes childcare cheaper by cleverly assigning one nanny to two families at a time.

As the nanny looks after both sets of children at once, each family pays a much-lower-than-average fee which, when put together, still makes for higher-than-average pay for the nanny. Not to mention the fact that the children get to make new friends!

Alongside these benefits, Koru Kids recruits, trains and vets its own quality nannies in-house, offering ongoing support and development through its active nanny community.

To date, the business has received a whopping 15,000 nanny applications and has accepted and trained more than 1,200 of these.

At its heart Koru Kids says it is a tech business, building and using its own software, automating much of its process and thereby boosting efficiency.

The start-up’s unique approach has definitely made an impression on parents and the business now provides around 14,000 hours of childcare a month, growing by an average of 10% each week.

Investors have also taken note, and the business has raised a total of £4.1m from VCs – notably, its latest round was oversubscribed by four times. Last year, the business was shortlisted for Tech Business of the Year and The Start Up Loans Inspiring Entrepreneur of the Year at the Startups Awards 2017.

“I want to build something that helps mums, dads, children and childcare workers all at once; something lasting and beneficial; something sustainable that people love,” Carrell tells us. “We’re building the world’s best childcare service.”