French startup Karamel wants to help you find things to do for your kids. The company is launching a mobile app that lets you find and book kid-friendly activities around you.
The startup also just raised a $560,000 round (€500,000) from Kima Ventures, Roxanne Varza, Thibaud Elzière and Oleg Tscheltzoff. Varza participates in the Atomico Angel Programme, which means that Atomico handed out $100,000 to invest in multiple early-stage companies. Atomico and Varza both see returns if the company eventually succeeds.
Karamel wants to become a one-stop shop for things your kids can do. When you open the app, you get a curated selection of activities around you so that you can find something to do this weekend, for instance.
If you’re looking for something specific, you can search for activities based on multiple criteria, such as the age of your child, an activity category, price, distance and day of the week.
You also can find recurring activities in case your child really wants to learn a new instrument or start a new sport, for instance.
On the other side of the marketplace, there are many different organizations in charge of activities. It’s a fragmented market, and those organizations don’t always know how to reach parents efficiently.
Thanks to Karamel, those organizations should get more traffic and could focus more on activities themselves. The startup doesn’t charge any monthly subscription fee. Instead, Karamel is taking a cut on transactions. Parents pay the same price if they book directly or though Karamel.
The service is currently live in Paris. And if you live in Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux or Montpellier, you can search for activities but can’t book through the app just yet.
In the U.S., KidPass provides something vaguely similar, but with a monthly subscription fee. KidPass opted for a credit-based system like Audible or ClassPass.
