Aimy: Driving Child Care through Digital

The backstory of Aimy is indeed an interesting one. In 2015, one of New Zealand’s most significant out of school care providers was facing difficulties in managing their massive administrative overhead. When Ray Lu, a technology enthusiast and serial entrepreneur, learned about this predicament, he quickly gathered a team of experienced developers to develop an innovative cloud-based solution with online registration and enrolment features. This solution not only managed the client’s multitude of franchise-related works but also removed most of their unnecessary paperwork. Today, Aimy’s first client has almost 200 active sites across New Zealand and is part of an aggressively growing global network. In the same vein, Aimy too has come a long way and is helping care and education providers in five countries in “getting back to what they love.” Auckland-based Aimy eliminates tedious work processes in an end-to-end manner, allowing parents and care providers to focus on nurturing tomorrow’s responsible citizens.

Aimy’s technology solution helps care providers create children’s learning programs in a fun and safe environment. The care providers no longer need to go through multiple folders for the requisite documents in case of government audits on any child safety matters. “Aimy is packed with dozens of purpose-built digital capabilities which obviate the painful manual processes,” states Echo Guo who has taken over the day-to-day management since August 2018. The company’s onsite tablet app that can work without Internet aids clients in accessing the daily summary of children, medical, and dietary information and collecting parents’ signatures with time-stamps for authorized drop-offs and pickups that add an extra layer of child safety.

Aimy is a boon to the parents as it offers a “parent portal” for a hassle-free registration anytime, anywhere. The company displays children’s activity calendar to keep parents updated on every event. Parents can also check any outstanding payments and instantly clear those using credit cards. It has strong integration with Xero—one of New Zealand’s most significant accounting software that automatically generates payment invoices with any booking. The integration facilitates smaller care providers in eliminating the need for bookkeeper as every payment is automatically recorded. Aimy also offers assistance when it comes to the management of the New Zealand government’s out of school care and recreation (OSCAR) subsidy to help reduce the labor cost of the providers.

Aimy has gained a leading position in the market due to its exceptional services and solutions. Currently, the company serves almost 80 percent of New Zealand’s out of school care market. “We also serve clients from different countries like Canada, South Africa, UK and Ireland with over 500 sites,” mentions Echo. Aimy’s solution holds the record of over 800,000 bookings and generation of over 1.5 million invoices.

Moving forward, Aimy focuses on territorial expansions in Australia. “We are launching a parent app very soon to match the need of today’s mobile-friendly world,” mentions Echo. In addition, it is also working on integration with payment gateway providers to offer stress-free payment solutions to parents and improved cash flow to providers.

Echo and her team at Aimy understand the importance of innovation. With the help of Callaghan Innovation grants and the New Zealand government’s innovation agency, Aimy is breaking grounds on a few new initiatives. “Our software records every step of a child’s growth, from birth right through their school years,” says Echo. “We want to utilize the increasingly maturing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies to analyze this growth data to assist parents in understanding their children’s potentials.” AI is considered to assure the safety of every child with its facial recognition functionality, eliminating the traditional way of taking signatures. Aimy will also explore the adoption of blockchain technology to ensure the security and ownership of children’s data.