Babysitter platform 2Care4Kids, best known in its home country as Oudermatch.nl, is expanding to Turkey and Argentina. In the last three years, the ‘sitter startup set up shop in Italy, Spain, Norway, Finland and Denmark. Turkey and Argentina mark the company’s first expansions outside of Europe. The startup intends 2Aim4Expansion into at least two more countries within a year from now.
Growth during Crisis
Founder Jules van Bruggen started Oudermatch.nl in 2009 when he and his wife couldn’t find a daycare centre for their kid. The aim of the site was to get local parents and babysitters in touch with eachother so they could organise daycare for the kids in their neighbourhood themselves. During the Global Financial Crisis a lot of Dutch parents could no longer afford to put their children in daycare, which resulted in rapid growth for Oudermatch.nl. In 2012 the company officially named itself the 2Care4Kids Group and created an internationally scalable platform.
Why Turkey and Argentina?
The two new countries where 2Care4Kids is opening up seem like strange picks at first glance. Van Bruggen explains there are some perfectly good reasons 2Choose4Turkey and Argentina as the countries to expand to next: “In both countries parents still depend on non-flexible, expensive traditional daycare. Parents often have to drive half an hour to drop their kids off and they have to adhere to the daycare centers’ strict pick up and drop off times.” Especially in the big cities there seems to be a lack of affordable alternatives to pricey daycare centers, and in both countries a large percentage of the population lives in the major cities. “The more urbanized a country is, the better our concept works”, Van Bruggen.
No need 2Search4Investors
So far 2Care4Kids has taken care of its funding all by itself. The company has not yet needed to involve external investors. It does not look like the successful startup needs to 2Ask4Funding anytime soon either. Since 2012 the amount of users has grown to 650.000 and van Bruggen is sure this rapid expansion will continue: “We expect to reach more than a million users with a year from now”.