In 2013, when the founder, Deepa, Priya and the Adira team were trying to figure out a way to spread awareness about the benefits of period panties, they knew they had to first get rid of the period taboo. Thus, HowToTellYourChild was conceptualized and brought to life, and Priya became the marketing head.

Apart from creating puberty videos that would help young girls and boys understand their bodies, they wanted to empower children to say no to sexual abuse by educating them about it, leading to the inception of the child safety video.

They searched for videos in the same genre and even after three months, only found content that would scare a child before reaching the heart of the matter. But they learned by speaking to people across the world that period-talk is a tough conversation to have, regardless of your passport.

The main objective of the videos was to make them child-friendly and free. After a lot of thought, they decided to use dragons to explain these tough topics to kids. The puberty for girls song was written by Priya and Deepa in two hours. Priya coined the title of the song and its chorus — Knick Knack Knock.

But all the planning and research wasn’t as hard as what came next. Finding animators, voices and singers for the videos was a daunting task with their limited budget and other brands to manage. But, their determination to make a difference helped them sail though.

“What started as an awareness campaign became a dream to help society,” said Priya. It wasn’t just a 9–5 job, rather, investing all their energy and resources to help someone out there. Kids don’t know how to tell adults if they are being abused.

The videos had trouble taking off in India initially because of the cultural conditioning that children from well-off families wouldn’t be abused. Adults would teach children about ‘Good vs. Bad touch’ but in reality, abuse has various indicators that can prevent it and these were showcased in the video. That’s why they came up with the five alerts and introduced new vocabulary that caught on well with the kids while testing the content.

But what really helped them skyrocket was a regular lady’s post. She wasn’t a social media celebrity and neither did she have a large following. She randomly came across one of the videos and shared them. In four days, there were 13 million views! Before they knew it, there were 26 million views and a few lakh shares. But, when Priya reached out to her, she deleted the post. Nevertheless, the initiative continued to grow and help families around the globe.

“The journey has been so thrilling. HowToTellYourChild is an exciting environment to be in and became an important part of my life, said Priya.”