How Oshin and Manjunath built Sitara, a parenting support app for Indian parents
No one prepares you for how confusing parenting can be.
As soon as a child arrives, advice starts coming from all sides. Family members, friends, social media, parenting forums – everyone has different opinions on what is right and what is wrong. For new parents, the flood of information can feel less like support and more like pressure.
This is exactly what Oshin and Manjunath experienced when they became parents.
Like many young couples, they constantly asked themselves one question: Are we doing this right? They wanted to raise a confident, emotionally secure child in a world that felt fast, complex and demanding. But instead of clarity, they got confusion.
The couple realized that Parenting these days is often accompanied by unrealistic expectations – Particularly for mothers, who are expected to intuitively “figure it all out”, while fathers are still often seen as people who merely “help” rather than actively parent.
They knew something had to change
What started as a personal search for answers soon turned into something much bigger. Oshin and Manjunath decided to leave their high-paying jobs and dedicate themselves fully to solving a problem they knew millions of Indian parents were facing.
After nearly two years of research, talking, and learning, they created Sitara – an app designed to make parenting easier Awesome and more informative.
The idea was simple: give parents access to reliable, expert-backed guidance, without making them feel criticized or inadequate.
Sitara brings together child psychologists, teachers and early childhood experts to help parents tackle everyday challenges – from tantrums and sleep routines to screen time, emotional development and school readiness.
Instead of overwhelming users with endless information, the platform focuses on practical, step-wise support that parents can actually do Apply in daily life.
But for Oshin and Manjunath, the mission is beyond consultation.
They wanted to challenge the way parenting was viewed in Indian homes. She believes that the burden of child-rearing should not fall on mothers, nor should fathers be treated as occasional partners. They say parenting should be shared equally – with both parents seeing, learning, and growing together.
Raising a child isn’t just about Milestones, marks, or achievements. It’s about presence. It’s about patience. It’s about building trust and confidence in those small moments that often go unnoticed.
People often say that it takes a village to raise a child.
In today’s India, Oshin and Manjunath are trying to recreate that village.
