The meltdowns were becoming unbearable. A close friend of Abhinav Rao Kuchipudi watched helplessly as his 10-year-old daughter withdrew into her screen, barely speaking during meals, her world shrinking to the glow of YouTube videos. Their relationship was fracturing, one notification at a time.
Three months later, everything changed. The same girl was asking for homework help, volunteering to cook dinner, and suggesting family hiking trips; activities that had disappeared from her life over a year ago.
“I got my daughter back,” the father told Kuchipudi. “Not because you took away devices, but because ParentVerse gave us a framework to talk about balance instead of fighting about it.”
This transformation encapsulates the mission behind ParentVerse, a Hyderabad-based startup launched in December 2024 that’s challenging how families navigate the digital world.
The Problem: More Than Just Screen Time
Modern parenting has become an endless negotiation with technology. Smart devices, online learning, and social media have created what Kuchipudi and his co-founder Neenv Raju Akunuri call “information chaos”, a state where families struggle to maintain real-world connections amid constant digital distractions.
The inspiration came from an unexpected source. As aunt and uncle to a niece and nephew, the founders witnessed firsthand how screen dependency was reshaping family dynamics. What started as casual observation evolved into a deeper investigation involving conversations with over 1,000 families, educators, and psychologists.
“We initially assumed that parents primarily needed monitoring tools,” admits Kuchipudi, whose background includes 15 years in business development across agri-tech and realty-tech, along with a B.Tech from IIT Roorkee. “But we realized it wasn’t just about offering a digital solution; it was about changing mindsets.”
Parents didn’t just want to track their children’s online activity. They needed guidance, awareness, and empathy-driven support to build healthier digital relationships with their children.
A Different Approach to Digital Parenting
ParentVerse distinguishes itself from conventional parental control apps like FamiSafe or Google Family Link through what the founders call “humanized parenting.” The platform combines screen time regulation, real-time location tracking, task and habit management, and gamified rewards but with a crucial difference in philosophy.
“We wanted to ensure that we weren’t creating a tool for snooping on kids, but rather a platform that helps build trust, understanding, and collaboration between parents and children,” explains Kuchipudi.
This philosophy extends to the platform’s freemium model. All essential tools, screen time control, activity monitoring, and report tracking are completely free, unlike many competitors who lock these behind paywalls. Premium features focus on expert-led courses and advanced resources that add meaningful value to the parenting journey.
“These core features are fundamental for a child’s healthy growth and a parent’s peace of mind, and we believe they should be available to everyone,” says Kuchipudi.
The platform’s newest addition, the Playbook, offers age-appropriate, expert-backed guidance for navigating challenges like body confidence, cyberbullying, early puberty, mental health, and social media use. Special attention has been paid to mothers’ needs, with features like daily app usage summaries, “Kid Mode” for essential apps only, and location tracking with safety zone alerts.
Beyond B2C: Building an Ecosystem
ParentVerse’s evolution reflects a deeper understanding of how parenting actually works. Initially focused purely on direct-to-consumer channels, the startup quickly realized that parenting doesn’t exist in isolation.
“Parenting is an ecosystem involving schools, gated communities, and NGOs,” notes Kuchipudi. “This insight reshaped our strategy to include both B2C and B2B2C partnerships, enabling us to reach parents where they already engage and build deeper, community-driven impact.”
Available on both Android and iOS, ParentVerse has already onboarded hundreds of active users from Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 cities across India. The target demographic, parents of children aged 3-15 years, represents a massive market navigating the challenges of raising kids in a digital-first environment.
The Team Behind the Mission
The husband-and-wife founding duo brings complementary strengths to the venture. While Kuchipudi handles operations, fundraising, and strategy, Akunuri who holds an MBA from GITAM School of International Business and brings eight years of finance and market risk management experience from BNY Mellon oversees marketing and finance.
The core team also includes Shubhanshu Srivastava as Tech Advisor (Founder of Talowiz and B.Tech from IIT Roorkee) and Saikiran Venugopal as Product & Brand Specialist. With 11-50 employees now based in Hyderabad, the startup is scaling thoughtfully while maintaining its bootstrapped status.
“This approach allowed us to stay close to our users, gather real-world feedback, and build a meaningful product before seeking external funding,” Kuchipudi explains.
Competitive Landscape: Reframing the Challenge
When asked about competition, Kuchipudi offers an unexpected perspective: “We don’t really see ourselves competing with FamiSafe, Happinetz, or Google Family Link. Rather, we see them as fellow travelers in the journey of solving digital parenting problems.”
The real competition, he argues, isn’t other apps; it’s the growing disconnect between parents and children caused by unmanaged screen time, online safety threats, and digital distractions.
“Our focus isn’t on beating other platforms; it’s on solving real problems that keep parents up at night,” he says.
This mindset has helped ParentVerse avoid unnecessary pivots. By investing heavily in research and user feedback from day one, the team built something genuinely useful rather than just another parental control app.
“Competition keeps us sharp, but our users’ voices guide our direction,” Kuchipudi notes.
Looking Ahead: A Movement, Not Just an App
ParentVerse’s six-month roadmap is ambitious: building partnerships with schools, NGOs, and family communities; introducing hyperlocal parenting resources; strengthening digital marketing and influencer collaborations; and onboarding verified parenting experts and counselors.
But the long-term vision extends far beyond these milestones. The founders envision ParentVerse becoming India’s most trusted parenting ecosystem, supporting families across urban and semi-urban regions with AI-driven personalization and expert-backed content.
“We’re not just managing screen time, we’re building a movement where every family, regardless of tech-savviness or income, has access to tools that raise digitally balanced children,” says Kuchipudi. “Our vision is simple: make digital wellness as fundamental to parenting as education.”
The transformation from a parental control app into a complete digital wellness ecosystem involves more than technical features. It requires changing the conversation around technology in families, from control to connection, from restriction to resilience.
Advice for Fellow Entrepreneurs
When asked what wisdom he’d share with new founders, Kuchipudi returns to the principle that guided ParentVerse’s creation: “Stay close to the problem you’re solving. Real insights don’t come from boardrooms; they come from listening to real people. Build for impact first, and scalability will follow.”
It’s advice born from experience, from watching a niece and nephew’s screen dependency, from conversations with 1,000 families, from witnessing a withdrawn 10-year-old rediscover family connections, and from the daily work of helping parents reclaim presence in a distracted world.
As one parent testimonial captures it: “ParentVerse gave us a framework to talk about balance instead of fighting about it.” In an age where family dinner tables compete with endless digital notifications, that might be the most valuable product feature of all.
ParentVerse is available on both the Google Play Store and Apple App Store, offering essential parental control features for free, with premium expert-led content and advanced tools available through subscription.
