Now moms can speak their heart out

Blrmoms.com, a website dedicated to women, especially mothers, was recently launched in the city. The site is a platform for mothers to seek advice, feel supported, make friends, or just relax. In a tête-à-tête with DNA, Bhavani Raman, the founder of the website, spoke about this unique concept.

What inspired you to come up with a website like this?
When I moved to India after a long stay in the US, I needed a lot of information for my family, like a good paediatrician for my kids, advice regarding good schools, and so on. More than that, I also craved for good friends to have fun with and get the emotional support a mom always needs.

As I am used to a lot of mother networking communities both online and offline in US, I was surprised to find no such thing in India, especially Chennai. Given my IT background, I decided to create one myself. Initially, I set up Chennaimoms.com and then Blrmoms.com happened.

What is unique about Blrmoms.com?
In other networking sites, you can connect to your friends; here, you can make new friends. The site offers to find moms who have similar interests, moms who have kids of the same age group, moms whose kids study in the same school, etc.

The site is totally secure. Moms can make friends only after verifying their e-mail id and mobile number. For mobile number verification, I personally call each one of them (irrespective of STD/ISD) to verify if it’s a woman. The pictures she posts in her profile and albums cannot be copied by others.

Are there panelists for expert columns?
We have an ‘Ask an expert’ section where we have gynaecologists, paediatricians, counsellors, lactation consultants, dieticians, cooking experts, beauticians and many more. This is completely anonymous, so moms can ask their personal questions too.

At present, we have experts from Chennai and Delhi. All the experts in our panel are doing it as a service to our moms and hence it is free of cost. Since it is online, the location does not matter.

What kind of queries does the website get mostly?
The queries cover anything and everything a woman needs for her family. To name a few, which school to choose for the kids, school snacks ideas, vacation spots, child health, online safety of teens, good investment/insurance, relationship problems, best doctors, beauty tips, tailors, recipes, planning birthday parties, after-school activities, etc.

Who are the target users of your website?
Moms who are net-savvy and can access internet at home or office. There is no age group being targeted. As long as they are women, they are welcome. We get 7,000 unique visitors every month in Blrmoms.com.

Do you have plans of expansion?
The website has been launched in other cities including Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, and Kochi. I would like to launch this site in every city in India as the local information and friendship is the most sought after in this age of nuclear families.