Toronto’s HiMama Acquires Daily Childcare Report

HiMama has purchased Daily Childcare Report.

The Toronto-based HiMama provides tools for preschools, child care centres and kindergarten teachers to send daily reports to parents about their children’s health and well-being throughout the workday.

The platform helps parents shift away from the omnipotent all-seeing webcam approach and focuses on development-driven relationship building with a child’s care provider.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though HiMama CEO Ron Spreeuwenberg notes that even though Daily Childcare Report is based in Canada, a lot of their user base comes from the U.S., a market where HiMama continues to expand. Overall, HiMama operates in 10 total countries.

“For the first time we’re shifting resources towards mergers and acquisitions,” explains Spreeuwenberg. “This is a creative way to grow our customer base in Canada and the U.S. There are quite a few smaller and medium startups in our space, and as HiMama develops, we can support the customers of those competitors to a larger degree.”

The acquisition also marks an important step towards further development of HiMama’s platform and brand, as more announcements could be on the way.

HiMama has grown without any real funding from venture capitalists and recently revealed that over 150 million moments have been shared through their platform.

Founded in 2012, DailyChildcareReport is similar to HiMama in the sense that it offers parents a snapshot of what their child was up to throughout the day, but it lacks functionality. Current users on the DailyChildcareReport platform will be ported to HiMama by the end of November 2017. Spreeuwenberg explains that new customers will be pleased with the switch.

“In terms of satisfying their customer base, we’re very confident we can accomplish that,” he says. “Our product is the highest-rated app of all childcare and pre-school pps in the market. That comes from being easy to use as well as being an all-in-one solution. Our competitors only have a subset of what HiMama offers.”

“HiMama has grown their business with a talented team of engineers and dedicated support staff,” says Christian Pekeler, founder of DailyChildcareReport. “I know that their product is excellent and their team is trustworthy, so I have no doubt that our customers will see this change as an upgrade.”

The goal for HiMama is to improve learning outcomes for children under five years old, as well as recognize the hugely valuable role that educators and caregivers play in the space.

“As a business, we see a macro trend where there will be more investment in early childhood education,” says Spreeuwenberg. “Educators in the space deserve those resources and we want to support them in that special and important role that they play in society.”

HiMama recently introduced smart billing into their platform to remove the administrative burden that comes with invoicing and tracking financials, allowing educators to spend more time providing for their students and children.