People’s Champion finalist 2018: Koru Kids

Start-up name: Koru Kids
Founders: Rachel Carrell
Started in: 2016
Based in: London
Business description: Nanny sharing app providing better childcare options to parents across London

Shortlisted categories:

Women in Business Award, and the Founders Pledge Social Impact Award

The Koru Kids story:

Serial entrepreneur Rachel Carrell is building an entirely new childcare system from scratch, aided by technology, £4.1m investment from top VCs, and a team of driven graduates and former start-up employees.

Her business is Koru Kids; a London-based childcare service which uses nanny sharing to enable parents to access affordable after school and summer school care.

Carrell, who has previously ran two companies and scaled them to over £20m revenue each, came up with the idea for Koru Kids after having her first baby and finding childcare to be “incredibly expensive, inflexible, painful to organise, and the quality far too patchy”.

Intent on addressing these issues by disrupting the UK’s £11bn childcare industry, Carrell launched Koru Kids in July 2016.

Today, Carrell tells us that Koru Kids is now the country’s biggest childcare brand, with 2,000 nannies trained and delivering hundreds of thousands of hours of care to parents across the capital.

The business deploys more than 100 nannies every week, each of whom are thoroughly vetted and trained, while requests from caregivers to become a Koru Kids nanny are soaring with over 30,000 applications received to date.

With an NPS score of 88 from parents, Koru Kids is hitting the mark that other childcare options have missed but Carrell asserts that getting the business to where it is today has not been without its challenges.

One of Carrell’s notable challenges then? Attempting to secure a £3.5m fundraise in the midst of having her second baby…24 hours after giving birth and out of necessity, Carrell was back at work taking investor calls and, no less than 72 hours later, was back having in-person investor meetings!

Why Koru Kids made our shortlist:

Led by an inspiring founder, Koru Kids is transforming the lives of thousands of parents across London with childcare costs a third of the price of standard options.

Carrell tells us that the business is growing 7% week-on-week and is intent on scaling from after school care to offer all sorts of childcare services in the future – growth which could well see Koru Kids become a household name in the market.

Where to find out more about Koru Kids:

Website: www.korukids.co.uk
Twitter: @korukids