Kiddoz, Sri Lanka’s first-ever Baby and Kids online marketplace, has been unveiled as the latest venture of leading Sri Lankan company LIMRA Holdings Limited. Kiddoz is being developed in close consultation with the esteemed E-commerce Consultant, Fathhi Mohammed (Co-Founder of PickMe Sri Lanka), who has come on board as a Strategic Consultant.

Kiddoz is a revolutionary technology company built by parents, for parents and their loved ones. Its Mission is to simplify parenting at every stage so that parents can spend more time with their children and less time worrying about everything else. As Sri Lanka’s first-ever parent-focused online ecosystem, Kiddoz marketplace provides parents and gift givers an intuitive, convenient, online experience that connects them with trusted global and local brands, traditional retailers, and a unique network of home-based retailers. Kiddoz allows customers to shop for a wide selection of products for mothers, babies, and kids.

One of the core objectives of Kiddoz is to boost entrepreneurship in Sri Lanka by empowering talented entrepreneurs seeking a platform to market their curated products and services. It aims to fill this gap and harness the power of local entrepreneurs within this industry by matching them with new markets. Therefore, a carefully-vetted network of home-based retailers providing quality rated products and services have been given the opportunity to market their products through Kiddoz. Every seller can perform a multitude of functions easily such as intuitively owning and managing their online shops, modifying listings, identifying product showings, providing custom product offerings and more.

Asvine Ganeshan – CEO of Kiddoz stated, “Having been in the industry for more than a decade, we’ve realized this industry has a gap in two key areas. First would be the parents and to-be parents being overwhelmed in trying to find the right shop to source the ideal products and brands for themselves, their children and babies. The second is small and home-grown local businesses not finding the right platform to reach their ideal target audience. Kiddoz was born with the key objective of bridging these gaps, through a convenient and intuitive all-in-one e-commerce marketplace.”

Fathhi Mohamed is the Co-Founder of DishServe, YOHO and PickMe and the Director of Founder Institute for Sri Lanka, the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator program started in Stanford University. He commented, “Asvine and Akeel wanted to add a tech startup component to their portfolios, but they didn’t want to do it the traditional way of running a SME. This encouraged me to spend my time to guide them on how to achieve this goal. They applied the tech startup methodology to their existing business fundamentals and industry knowledge, which gave them the fuel needed for fast and sustainable growth even in this difficult market conditions.”

Looking ahead, Kiddoz aims to become a comprehensive parenting solution integrating a wide range of cutting-edge features, including a dynamic learning management system with video streaming capabilities, a portal with in-demand service providers for parents to look after their babies, an online activity center, and an online community connecting parents, doctors, and businesses to help engage and obtain help with navigating through the parenting journey.

The company also plans to build the technology in Sri Lanka and implement it in the South Asian region with India being earmarked as the first target possibly during the next 12-month period.

With over 28 years of experience, LIMRA Holdings has a renowned presence across many industries and has established a strong foothold as a leader in providing baby and toy products, ICT, and smart and physical security products and services in Sri Lanka and beyond.

Kiddies & Toys International (KTI), a subsidiary of leading Sri Lankan conglomerate LIMRA Holdings Limited, has launched PLEX toys in India by unveiling its first toy range “The Playing Blocks". The toys were launched in partnership with Viacom18 Media, India's fastest growing entertainment network and a house of more iconic brands including Nick and Nick Jr., the number-one entertainment brands for kids.

PLEX, an own intellectual property under KTI, in keeping with the brand’s motto of ‘Shaping Leaders of Tomorrow’ was created to help nurture the next generation through toys that drive creativity, inspiration and innovation. PLEX toys range is specially made for children from the ages of 3 months to 9 years and comprises infant toys, puzzles, activities, wooden toys, building blocks, steam toys, role play toys, seasonal toys, and licensed toys. All PLEX toys are made with child safety standards, provide value for money, and are backed by international certifications.

Being a Sri Lankan company, the export and sale of PLEX toys by KTI in the Indian market will help bring in valuable foreign exchange earnings to Sri Lanka which in turn will contribute towards easing of the current economic situation. LIMRA Holdings is present internationally through strategic joint ventures in the SAARC, Middle East and South East Asia such as Bangladesh, Oman and Singapore, thereby giving it multiple opportunities to bring in foreign exchange earnings to Sri Lanka.

 Nabhan Akeel – Chairman/Group CEO of LIMRA Holdings Limited

Sharing his thoughts on the launch, Nabhan Akeel – Chairman/Group CEO of LIMRA Holdings Limited stated, “Sri Lanka is in the midst of an economy crisis and it is vital that exporting companies ramp up their efforts in order to bring in valuable foreign exchange and prop up the local economy. As a leading corporate entity in Sri Lanka, we have taken on this responsibility by enhancing our efforts on multiple fronts to achieve this national goal. The successful PLEX launch in India is one of several such initiatives that we have outlined. We will continue to promote exports by making strategic expansions into key regions of the world to seek successful business opportunities.”

Anthony Pinto – Vice President of KTI India Private Limited commented, “KTI India team started conceptualizations to build the idea into a quality product of international standards in the category space followed by an aggressive Go-To-Market strategy by the Sales leads and their team ensuring we have a successful launch. We have planned multiple toys/games in 2022 under our brand PLEX where all toys will be unique and of international quality standards. Our pure focus is to make PLEX one of the favourites brand among kids and infants’ category on the global map and we have a 3 year plan to take the brand to different continents eventually. Overall, our plan is to make PLEX a US$ 10 million brand by 2026.”

LIMRA Holdings is a medium-sized diversified conglomerate in operation for the past 28 years. It was established as an IT business which is now successfully diversified into 12 group companies in four sectors across six clusters. Kiddies & Toys International (KTI) was formed in 2001 as one of LIMRA Holdings’ subsidiaries to exclusively market baby, mother care products and toys. The company is the Exclusive Agent in Sri Lanka for internationally-renowned brand Farlin and the local agent for iconic global toy brands Lego and Mattel. Through its subsidiaries, the group also manages and distributes over 25 top global brands and seven own brands in the local market.