FirstCry: "The Why"

The needs of babies and kids are many fold. New parents are often overwhelmed by the effort it takes to get all of those covered. There is just so much to buy for their baby, and many items with short replacement cycles, that it’s stressful for new parents.

According to the Redseer Report, childcare is a non-discretionary, essential expense, for which there is perpetual need and FirstCry nails it.

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FirstCry offers a one stop solution for all the shopping needs of babies and kids along with their mothers. It makes life easy for new parents through supporting 3 essential parenting needs - shopping, parenting community and education. The platform offers plethora of brands and collections to choose from. The product categories cover for almost all the shopping needs that a parent might have.

The different offerings of the company are as follow:

• Multi-channel retailing platform for mothers’, kids’ and babies’
• Own brands across product categories - babyhug, PineKids, CuteWalk, babyoye
• Pre-schools

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TAM & Market Growth

Today India is among the youngest nations in the world, with 308 million children between the ages of 0 and 12. The Childcare Products Market in India is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 13-14% from ₹2,466 billion (approximately US$31 billion) in CY2022 to reach ₹4,500-4,800 billion (approximately US$56-60 billion) by CY2027.

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PMF Validation (specific to FC App):

• The Average Order value of FirstCry is at INR 2151 as of Dec’23. This is a high benchmark as compared to other e-commerce players (For reference, Amazon has AOV of INR 1600 as of 2024).

• AOV is increasing YoY which validates that market fit of the product is cumulatively perfecting over time even though multiple new features and product ranges are added.

• Ever growing community strength of “FirstCry Parenting”, the parenting community by FirstCry, is proof of customer validation for  content and product strategy.

Pain Points:

FirstCry addresses following customer pain points through its offerings:

• • Availability of wide range of options to choose from across categories
  • Quality and brand assurance in online shopping
  • Ability to shop different item (product categories) at one place
  • Exclusive, trendy collection for my kid

Unique selling proposition:

“One stop solution for all shopping needs as parent”

Repeat usage:

FirstCry actively seeks to build long term relationships.

The users satisfied with their orders and quality of products received, continue to shop with FirstCry over the years. 

Customers repetitively order replenishable like diapers, baby creams, powders, soaps, shampoos etc.

Why customers choose FC over its competition:

FC’s long standing position is function of multiple things that has worked even when competition in the space intensified in recent years:

• Positioning FirstCry as ‘destination for parenting needs’
• Emotional connect with parents which starts as early as when mother conceives child
• Ever growing product categories and range of options, driven by customer behavioral data collected over the years ahead of competition.

ICP

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Insights and Patterns through ICPs

While talking to many customers. we gain some general patterns among users:

• Majority of the users considers FirstCry as a brand on which they trust and knew that this app is useful to shop for their kids
• While some users considers FirstCry as quality based product (ICP 1), some users think of it as a one-stop solution for kids (ICP 2). Especially ICP 2 kind of customers wants some of the best products for their kids, which they rely on FirstCry and not go to somewhere else to waste their time and energy.
• Although there are some sets of customers (ICP 3) which may not be the best and ideal customers from outside but FirstCry spends a lot of resources to acquire these customers and be omni-present. So I also talked to these kinds of customers.
• To ICPs 3, FirstCry is not some high-profile brand or costly app, they consider it to be money-saver app. They mostly get discounts and offers with convenience at home which makes their decision fruitful.
• While I get a chance to interact with majorly tier-1 and tier-2 city customers, one thing I noticed on FirstCry platform that they are also available offline in many tier-3 cities too. This interest me a lot as it would certainly open many opportunities to unlock new insights about these users.

Additional Insights about FirstCry

• Most of the users use FirstCry to get access to various brands and large product portfolio of consumables for would be moms, newborns, babies and kids.
• Access to large set of products at single place is main driver in making customer use the product once & repeat usage
• Users do use FirstCry Parenting and consume the content, but they do not like it be forced to participate in the community over their main motive of shopping

JTBD & Validation

FirstCry was established as a marketplace for all baby & kid needs. This continues to be the main value proposition of the platform.

However, in recent times, the company has experimented with community building, aiming at making the platform all in one advice platform along with the marketplace.

The community has grown rapidly making FirstCry parenting community Asia’s largest community of such kind.

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Validation

Following is the rationale behind JTBD stated above:

• Exploring and shopping from wide range of products is core purpose of users for using app or walking into the store
• Users use FirstCry for personal goals
• • Taking advice from FirstCry parenting
  • For efficiency & ease of shopping for their little ones from the comfort of home at best price

In essence,

Users (mostly would be moms or parents) hire FirstCry to shop for their child from a wide range of products.

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When we talked to various customers, analyzed the reviews on playstore, comments to their posts on social media, following are some observations on what customers are trying to achieve from FirstCry:

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• When I buy online, I want to buy from the latest trends, so that I can show them off to everyone before it becomes commonplace.

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• When I buy for my kid, I want the products to be of the best quality and justice for money, so that I can feel good about my purchase.

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• When I shop for my kid, I want my kid to feel comfortable in those items (such as clothes, dippers etc.), so that he/she likes that and I get value for my money.

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• When I order from FirstCry, I want to be able to get quality products on time, so I can make my baby put them on and make our social gatherings enriching.

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Activation Metrics

As I talked to best users, observed their behavior and mapped their behavior backwards to validate what they say, i came up with 5 activation metrics which are detailed below with reasoning.

1. Hypothesis: 1 order within 1st week

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Reason: Most of the users install FirstCry to buy a particular item. When they install the app, they are exposed to various options on the platform. They might end up ordering something different from what they have installed the app for but they usually buy something or the other within the 1st week of getting on the app.

2. Hypothesis: Spend more than AOV within D14

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Reason:  AOV is a suitable benchmark as it indicates how much value the new user is deriving from the product as compared to the existing cohort of users. Spend of AOV within two weeks of onboarding on an app is also a reflection of how relevant is product assortment & pricing for the given user. FirstCry’s AOV is increasing YoY. It stands at INR 2181 as of Jun’23 as declared in the company’s DRHP filing (screenshot attached for reference)

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3. Hypothesis: Shop from 3 or more categories within 1st month

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Reason: FirstCry app is full of various categories with the aim to be all in one marketplace for the needs of babies, kids and their mothers. User buying from different categories indicates that they are able to meaningfully engage with the app to get their job done. The time horizon is kept relatively longer as users might take their time to explore different categories and develop trust with apps and listed products.

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4. Hypothesis: 90 minutes of average time spend on the app over first week.

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Reason: FirstCry has wide range of brands and product categories a user can choose from. The "Parenting" section is designed to educate users and enhance the community. Higher time spend is attributed to usage of these features. Additionally, Average session duration can also be used as a proxy for user engagement. More the average session duration, more is the user engagement and more the value driven by customer (assuming high correlation between user engagement and value to customer).

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Finalizing the Activation metric:

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Conclusion:

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Activation metric to track:

Spend of more than AOV within D14

Assumption based on user conversations and data: If a user is spending more than AOV within D14, then the product has found a fit with the user & the user is likely to stick with the product for longer duration.

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Customer Journey Map:

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Onboarding Teardown

FirstCry teardown by Vishwambhar pandey.pdf