Flintobox

Flintobox was founded by Arunprasad Durairaj,^[1] Vijaybabu Gandhi, and Shreenidhi Srirangam. They are also the co-founders of Flintoclass.^[2] As young parents, they realised the growing trend of screen addiction in children ^[3] and the urgent requirement for activities to get their children engaged with. The idea of Flintobox was then born. After a few test runs,^[4] they invested their savings of close to Rs. 10 lakh to establish the business in September 2013.

In October 2014, they raised US$300,000 ^[5] from leading angels GSF Global, Globevestor (USA),^[6] AECAL (Germany), and Mauj Mobile. Mauj Mobile already owns three app platforms, namely, AppyStore, Gamesbond and Mobango.^[7] The investment primarily went into scaling marketing, operations, and product development capabilities. The company began operations with designing products for 4-8 year olds and is currently catering to 2-12 year olds.

The third and fourth round of funding was for Rs.2cr in 2015 and Rs.6.2cr in 2016 respectively, and was led by Ashwin Chadha - a leading Angel Investor, and Globevestor with participation from existing investors. In 2017, Series-A funding was done by Lightbox and they invested Rs.45cr along with existing investors. InnoVen Capital, Asia's leading venture debt and specialty lending firm, made a debt investment of INR 60 million in 2018. In 2020, Pre-Series B funding of $7.2 million, was led by Lightbox Ventures.

The name Flintobox originates from flint, a sedimentary rock, which can generate sparks when struck against steel.^[6]

Flintobox offers three subscription plans, which customers can upgrade or cancel at any point of time.^[8] There are 3-month, 6-month, and 12-month subscriptions available. The company looks at teaching children several age-appropriate concepts and build 16 developmental skills over the period of their subscription. Currently, Flintobox has more than 10 lakh subscribers.

Subscribers of Flintobox also receive a digital feed of parenting tips, engaging activity ideas and downloadable worksheets to do with children through the Free Flintobox App.^[9]

Flintobox started off in 2013 with products for 4-8 year olds. Each box contains 3-4 play based activities ^[10] that bring about overall development of the child. It is educational and is designed by child development experts to make learning more engaging and healthy for kids. Each month has a new theme based on which all the activities are designed.^[11] Flintobox has a tie-up with International Institute of Information Technology in Hyderabad to design developmental games that can help with a child's motor skills, creative thought process, and overall psychological development.^[12]

Flintobox targets at getting four main activities inside every box that makes a child create, explore, play, read, and sometimes a bonus activity is included.^[13]

In December 2015, Flintobox announced that it was expanding its product line to include products for children between the ages of 2-3 and 3–4. The new products have 3-5 activities inside each box. The boxes have toys themed around topics like wildlife, vegetables, coloring, outer space, numbers, and others - all aimed at 16 developmental needs in children.^[14] At the end of 2016, Flintobox began producing activity kits^[15] for 8-12 year olds that deals with everyday science concepts and experiments.

At present, Flintoboxes are shipped across India. The concepts are ideated and designed in-house, but manufacturing is generally done by suppliers. Bengaluru and Chennai contribute to over 30 percent of Flintobox's revenue.^[16]