PRODUCT NEWS
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| Tech entrepreneur aims to transform child activity sector |
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| 11 May 2016 . BY Jak Phillips |
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| The app is designed to book activities for children within two minutes / Goplaygo |
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A serial entrepreneur with experience of working in Silicon Valley has turned his attention to boosting youth activity through an innovative new booking platform designed to get young people moving.
Robin Brattel – who has founded multiple tech companies and previously worked alongside inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee – is due to launch Goplaygo next month, a booking app which aims to take the pain out of arranging activities for young children.
“It was born out of my frustration at how difficult it was to book activities such as swimming and dancing for my own kids,” Goplaygo CEO Brattel told Health Club Management.
“Parents want a painless way to arrange their kids’ activities and providers want to maximise capacity, but no one’s really cracked it yet.”
Currently, only half of seven-year-olds are meeting recommended physical activity guidelines of 60 minutes per day, with bad habits often being forged through sedentary early years. There has been increased focus among policymakers on how to reverse the situation, amid warnings that children’s inactive lifestyles are a ‘ticking time-bomb’ for the NHS.
The timely new app follows recent policy calls from ukactive for the government and technology companies to incentivise and reward developers who are creating technology which can get children moving.
To use Goplaygo, parents enter their post code and are then presented with a selection of activities in their vicinity – which can be filtered according to their child’s age (the app currently caters for 0-6 year-olds) and activity preferences – before proceeding to the booking page. The app, which takes a 10 per cent cut of bookings, caters for all manner of children’s activities and carries out rigorous quality assurance prior to providers being accepted.
“We’re initially launching in North London, but will look to scale out quickly and we’ll probably do a funding round at some point later this year,” added Brattel.
“We’ve also had significant interest from senior investors in America and we’d like to launch there as soon as possible.
“Ultimately we’d aim for global scalability, with booking options for all ages. Uber and Airbnb started from nothing, so there’s no reason why we shouldn’t think big.”
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