A healthy spa experience for newborn

There was a time when just born babies would get the best massages in the world by the elders in the family every day before their bath. These therapies are said to be good to strengthen the days-old-babies. With nuclear families, and overindulgent mothers, these age-old massage therapies have stopped being what they were.

A completely new concept, a one of its kind baby spa started by Swathi Kolla is definitely making its mark as new born babies get an experience that they should be getting and more. Swathi, being a mother made her more conscious about what kind of treatment the little ones must get in the formative days.

Swathi shared, "I did my master's in electrical engineering at Ohio, United States, I worked for two years at US in Intel before I moved back to India and joined my family business, which is automobile dealership; we own Lakshmi Hyundai and Harley Davidson showrooms. I was taking care of the entire dealership for more than five years.

I had gone on a holiday to London along with my son, who was six months old, and we just passed by a baby spa logo and I started wondering what it could be. For quite a long time I wanted to do something that is related to kids. There is a huge potential in India for kids care. I did a lot of research online and I tried to get in touch with the founders of this concept, I met them and then I wondered why it did not exist in India.

I met couple of doctors in London and they told me lot of advantages of spa therapies designed for babies, which help them to develop soon as it is the age where baby's development is very important. I thought of this and then I researched about it for one year and started this baby spa in Hyderabad."

"It is always better and good to start anything from home city, be it any new concept Hyderabad is an accepting place. It is easier for me to do it physically here. I initially thought of New Delhi too, but then when we went through a consultancy, it made me realise Hyderabad is the best option. I am glad I did that."

About how does the baby spa work? And, what kind of spa treatments are given to the kids? she mentions, "We do it for newborn from two days onwards and for babies until eight months. We offer two therapies;hydrotherapy and massage therapy. The overall session is for a maximum of one hour and twenty minutes each. Depending on their activity we give the right stimulation."

Doing research on baby spa has certainly given Swathi a new perspective for what she has done today, "From experiences as a mother to a son and from all my friends who have kids, that we ae not much in control of what's happening around us.

Earlier in our times when we catch cold it would last for three days, but now it is different, kids catch cold for almost 10 to 15 days as the immunity has become so low. As mothers when we take stress, it does affect the child as we feed them. I feel that this concept is like a wellness to the baby and when I went through this concept, I was really inspired. I wondered why it was not there for all these years."

With the baby spa being in the market for six months now Swathi says the only challenge was to increase awareness. "The only challenge that came up to me was to explain the concept. The concern we heard from parents was what kind of water we use and how safe was it for the kids. We have a patent device that goes around the neck called 'bubby'.

It is so safe that it supports the chin and optical bone of the baby, which is safe. The water is purified and ultra-filtered, UV sterilised, everything around is sterilised and the oils that we use is from the baby spa wine yard. We are still working on the awareness of the concept."

Marketing for automobiles and then managing baby spa is a totally different thing, "I am a mother myself and I wanted to do something for kids. Very soon I will be coming up with training six-month old babies to swim."

Support from her family was a challenge too. "It took some time for them to connect with the concept; it was difficult to convince my father. At one point of time I had to take him to London to show him what the whole concept of baby spa is.

Even then he was a little sceptical and after the review from his friends and people around, they are more positive now.""I would want to spread this across the country, now that I know the challenges. I will start from prime cities like New Delhi, mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata."