Since the dawn of time, raising children has been one of the most challenging and time-intensive tasks anyone took on. Fortunately for many, the parenting technology field is filled with plenty of startups looking to make it easier to raise children.
Jiobit is a startup working to give parents peace of mind wherever their kids roam. Their flagship product is a location tracker designed to withstand the activities children commonly perform. It’s a small white square with rounded corners that is designed to clip to the child’s clothes. It runs off a single AA battery and is made from a soft silicone material that doesn’t irritate the wearer’s skin.
At the core of the tracker is a combination of sensors including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, cellular, and GPS to provide accurate location information wherever the child goes.
Founder John Renaldi, formerly a VP at Motorola Mobility said that the inspiration for Jiobit came about last summer, “I experienced the worst panic of my life when my 6-year-old son got lost in a crowded park. It took me 30 minutes to find him. As a parent, I’ve always been concerned about my kids’ safety and this event left me feeling like I needed to do more.”
Jiobit will feature a companion mobile app (for Android and iOS devices) to enables parents to view their child’s whereabouts via their smartphone. The app will also allow parents to grant authorized individuals (such as a caregiver or other parent) the ability to view the tracking information.
One of the biggest features of the tracker is the ability to create a “safety harness.” If the child wearing the device wanders too far away from the parent or a specified route, an audible alert is automatically triggered. A notable element of the “safety harness” is its self-learning capabilities. Rather than having to manually program routes, Jiobit automatically recognizes the paths the wearer commonly takes (such as a bus route) and adapts accordingly.
Since privacy is a concern of many parents, the device is COPPA compliant, and all data is stored and transmitted using industry standard encryption.
To accommodate Jiobit’s small form factor, the devices’ circuit boards are printed using ELIC (every layer interconnect) construction, which allows for a more compact device layout.
The Jiobit battery is rated to last for at least a month with regular usage.
To date, Jiobit has raised $4.2M in two rounds from 14 investors including MATH Venture Partners, Harvard Business School Angels, Nameless Ventures, and Techstars. The company website says Jiobit will be available for pre-order later this year. While there’s no set figures on pricing at the moment, executives from the company have said the monthly subscription will cost “less than Netflix.”
