Lock the phone before handing it to the kid: the team behind "Where is my Train" tests a parental app in India

EpowerX Labs, based in Bengaluru, listed "ChildLock: Kids Safe" on Google Play in Sep 21. Before handing their phone to a kid, a parent taps it: the kid can only watch YouTube channels the parent approved, and other apps are locked with a fingerprint. By Nov 6 it had only 3,270 installs, which is not a hit. It's worth watching because the company behind it has already built two apps with 6.4M and 2.45M installs using the same phone-locking tech. ChildLock is their attempt to move that playbook to parents. So far the test is mediocre.

A "so good app" review

In Nov 3, a user named Sony Jha on the India Google Play store left ChildLock a review. The whole text was three words: "so good app". It's the only review visible on the store page. At the time, there were 20 ratings in total, averaging 4.1 stars.

Its installs grew fastest that same week: Oct 29 was 557, and by Nov 3 it reached 3,217 (Google Play installs). That same week it jumped from version 0.2 to 1.1, got a new logo, and added "daily time limits per app for each child". It climbed to #29 on the India free parenting chart. Then growth stopped: in Nov 5 it only rose by 53, and in Nov 6 it didn't gain any at all, dropping to #64.

What it is

The opening of its iOS store page describes a scene every parent knows: "Your kid says they want to look something up on your phone. You unlock it, hand it over, and pray: they end up playing games or watching random videos."

ChildLock steps in at that exact moment, and does three things:

• Only approved channels. Parents pick from a curated list of kids' channels (nursery rhymes, stories, classic cartoons; the website says "slow pace, real people on screen, no unboxing, no AI junk, no fast-cut brainwashing"), or search for a channel and add it themselves. Inside the app, the kid only sees videos from those channels, played through YouTube's official player.
• Lock other apps. YouTube itself (including Shorts), games, Instagram and the browser can all be locked with one tap. When the kid opens one, a overlay blocks it, and only the parent's fingerprint (Face ID on iPhone) can unlock it.
• Hand over the phone by the clock. Parents can choose 15, 30, 45 or 60 minutes. When time runs out, everything locks again, and if the kid wants more, they have to ask the parent.

No sign-up, no separate phone for the kid, no Google child account needed. The first line of the Play page says who it's for: "For Indian parents who hand their phone to their kids". On the India App Store the price is ₹99 a month or ₹999 a year, with a discounted annual deal at ₹299.

Who is behind it

EpowerX Labs founder Ahmed Nizam Mohaideen (LinkedIn) built the Indian train-timetable app "Where is my Train", which Google later acquired. The company's developer page now lists six apps, all built on the same stack: on Android, it uses usage-access permission plus an overlay to put a cover over locked apps; on iPhone, it uses Apple's Screen Time API. Each app gives phone-locking a different reason to exist:

One engine, one scenario per new app: new copy, new name, new store keywords, and very low development cost. ChildLock gets about a thousandth of its two bigger siblings' volume.

Where the traffic comes from

The siblings' acquisition methods are public: BrainPal recruits Instagram creators to post reels labeled #ad, and viewers enter a source code in the "How did you hear about us" field at sign-up (for example ISHOWSPEEDCL), so they can count how many users each creator brings. Regain also has a batch of Hindi "how to use it" tutorial videos.

We found no creator videos for ChildLock, no media coverage, and no discussion on X or Reddit. The 29 to 3 installs of 2,300 between Oct and Nov likely came from a push the same week as the redesign (inferred). Whether they paid for ads, worked with creators, or moved users over from Regain, we can't tell. What is clear is that the bar for India's free parenting chart is low: 7 days and 1,400 installs was enough to reach the top 30. Once that push stopped, daily installs fell back to a few dozen.

Who it's competing with

The feature combo isn't new. Put simply, it's "a YouTube Kids allowlist plus an app lock". Competitors fall into three groups:

Separately, in 2026 a handful of small products appeared that focus on "parent-approved YouTube channels": WatchSafe, LittleLoop, SafePlay, VidCove and whitelist.video. They target the US market and rely on SEO articles to bring users in. In India, Mama Kids Control was listed at almost the same time as ChildLock (in Sep 27) and has 1,937 installs.

ChildLock is different in only one respect: it bets on "one phone for the whole family". Mainstream parental controls assume the kid has their own phone, but many Indian families don't work that way; the kid uses the parents' phone.

Where the money comes from

Subscription at ₹99 a month, about $1.2. It has never charted on the top-grossing list. The iOS version has been up since Oct 1 and still has only 0 ratings, so conversion and revenue aren't visible from outside. Given typical conversion rates for Indian subscription apps, the 3,000 or so installs it has would bring in negligible revenue (estimate).

If it were you

Verdict: C. There's something to learn here, but not something to copy directly. The need is real, but ChildLock hasn't yet shown anyone will pay for it. Google's free option sits above it, and a number of similar apps overseas are already competing. The company behind it has its biggest asset in distribution and an existing user base, which you don't have.

Who it fits: teams that already have a phone-locking, focus or anti-scrolling app, plus a ready user base and creator channels. For you, the thing worth taking is the "one engine, new apps per scenario" approach: study, bedtime, prayer time, kids. Give each scenario its own name and copy, use creators with source codes to test which scenario gets traction, and spend more only once one does.

Who it doesn't fit: indie developers starting from scratch who want to get organic store traffic from the broad term "parental controls". Under that term sit AirDroid, FlashGet and Google itself. Play's review of overlay and usage-access permissions is getting stricter too, so the risk of rejection or removal is higher than for a typical utility.

How to do it (if you still want to): don't fight it head-on in India. Pick a market where "one phone for the whole family" is just as common but EpowerX hasn't gone, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Nigeria or Brazil, and build a curated kids' channel list in the local language. The list is the product. The tech is easy for anyone to build; the hard part is that someone has to seriously curate what 3 to 8 year-olds in each country should watch. Start with Android, no sign-up, a one-time purchase or a very cheap annual fee.

How to get users: copy BrainPal. Find local mom and parenting creators to make short videos, give each one a source code, and work out how many paying users each brings. Shoot the opening scene: the kid takes the phone, and three minutes later they're scrolling Shorts.

When the window closes: there's no hard deadline, and this need won't go out of date. But if Google adds a "single-device hand-off mode" to YouTube Kids, the gap closes.

What would show we got it wrong: if ChildLock picks up again over the next month or two and holds at several hundred or more installs a day, or makes the India parenting top-grossing chart, that means people are paying for it, and the grade should go up. If it quietly stops updating, or EpowerX puts its energy back into Regain and BrainPal, that means even the team best at this thinks the scenario isn't worth it.