Otay is a new app for finding and scheduling babysitters in Chattanooga. The purpose of the app is to find child care and it has a similar model to dating apps.
When looking for a babysitter on Otay, you can find a match by swiping right if you’re interested in a particular babysitter and left if not.
Lindsay Lekkalapudi said the idea for Otay came from a genuine need for an easier way to find a babysitter for her son, Archie. She and her husband, Naveen, have found a solution.
“My husband has always worked in engineering,” said Lekkalapudi. “He’s been an engineer for a long time and a big proponent of solving problems with technology. He said, ‘Let me try this. Let’s see if we can do it,’ and that’s how it is: Otay is born!”
With a simple swipe you can find your perfect babysitter.
“It does feel a little disrespectful to take your most valuable asset, your child, and then playfully swipe over babysitters, but we put a lot of thought into the background of these babysitters,” Lekkalapudi said. “You can look at their profiles. You can look at their experience. You can look at what they charge. You can look at pictures of them and you can even message them in the app.”
Lekkalapudi said the traditional way of finding a babysitter is a logistical nightmare that involves “phone ping-pong” and last-minute cancellations. She said Otay is designed to avoid that hassle.
“You always have a list of available babysitters. You can always go ahead and find more babysitters because everyone has different availability,” Lekkalapudi said. “As a parent, if you post a shift and no one takes it, you can just go back to the match tab, add a few more babysitters to your list, approve a few more people, they can see your schedule and now it’s very likely that someone will take it.”
The app covers a 25-mile radius of Chattanooga. Lekkalupudi said they do multiple levels of verification on both babysitters and parents.
“We vet our babysitters and we vet our parents,” Lekkalapudi said. “We don’t want to put a babysitter in a compromising situation, just like we don’t want to put a child in a compromising situation.”
She added that they are conducting a manual check through Dru Sjodin’s National Sex Offender Registry and Hamilton County public criminal records.
The app is free for babysitters to use.
“We don’t take a commission, unlike some of the other sites we’ve seen,” Lekkalapudi said.
It costs parents $2 per month to use the app, but currently Otay is offering a six-month free trial. The app is currently available on the App Store and will be available on the Google Play Store in late August.
Lekkalapudi hopes that parents will think of Otay first when they need a babysitter and view it as a reliable platform.
The public is invited to Otay’s launch party this Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to noon at Tatum Park in Highland Park.
