India’s Senior Citizens Want To Live Full Lives. 6 Start-ups Helping With That

As India’s senior citizens become a larger group, here are some start-ups enabling seniors to live comfortable and productive lives.

While India is often considered a ‘youthful’ country with a large proportion of its population being under 30, the other end of the spectrum is also growing!

Reports suggest that by 2050, senior citizens (defined as those over 60) will form 20% of the Indian population. Increasingly, many seniors also want to live independent lives as they grow older, continuing to enjoy their hobbies, following their own schedules, and continuing to be productive in their later years. Many especially from more affluent, urban society, choose to live on their own rather than with children, or pursue independent lives even when living with extended family.

Here are just a few of the interesting and innovative start-ups catering to India’s senior citizens.

Emoha

Launched in 2019 by Saumyajit Roy and Rohit Bhayana, this Gurugram based start-up Emoha focuses on health and safety needs of the senior citizens. It has curated various services to enable members with options like health tracking, emergency response, safety and a 24/7 emergency toll free number. The Emoha app assesses the home where the senior citizen is living and checks out its potential hazards. It tries to make the person’s home feel like a real home while providing benefits to the elderly in and around the Delhi NCR region.

Empowerji

Founded in Mumbai by Aparna Thakker in 2018, Empowerji focuses on helping the elderly to get comfortable with technology so that they are able to live independently in this digital world. They enable senior citizens to learn how to becoming digital savvy, through online workshops, an app as well as their platform. The Empowerji app also acts as a sort of virtual concierge to help seniors take care of their daily needs.

Seniority

In 2017, Tapan Mishra and Ayush Agarwal set up Seniority in Pune. It’s an e-commerce platform catering towards the needs of senior citizens, selling a range of products catering to seniors’ wellness, health, and lifestyle needs. It not only sells products but also organises community programs like health and yoga camps for its customers. Seniority has stores in Pune and Coimbatore and has expanded to Chennai and Bhiwadi too.

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SeniorWorld

SeniorWorld was launched in 2015 when the co-founder Rahul Gupta turned 50 and started to think about the struggles senior citizens face and that eventually he too would have to face. He and his friend MP Deepu quit their jobs in the telecom sector to launch this start-up.  It launched Easyfone, its flagship product that according to the company enhances the independence and safety of the elderly.  The phone is easy to dial with lit keys and emergency button, location sharer and other features that are useful to the elderly.

Senior Shelf

A difficulty in finding a good blood pressure machine for his mother led to Rahul Upadhyay launching Senior Shelf in 2014. Senior Shelf is an online marketplace where you can buy various things senior citizens may require to lead a comfortable life, including walking sticks, hearing aids, wheelchairs and more. Headquartered at Mumbai, it delivers all around India.

Silver Talkies

An online platform for the elderly, Silver Talkies began as a blog by Nidhi Chawla and Reshmi Chakraborty. It provides relevant information on senior citizens’ welfare, expert advice and also conducts online and offline workshops and events like heritage walks and art events to engage the senior citizens.

Top image credits Visage from Getty Images, via Canva Pro

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