Advertisement

High Tech & High Touch: Giving the Elderly a Hand

In the fanfare around India’s increasingly younger population, we often lose sight of the fact that while our numbers swell so does the count of our elderly. Yet, we do not have any substantive public social security system and the care for the old is generally relegated to the familial space.

In the fanfare around India’s increasingly younger population, we often lose sight of the fact that while our numbers swell so does the count of our elderly. Yet, we do not have any substantive public social security system and the care for the old is generally relegated to the familial space.

The “conflict” that results is that which pits “dreams and duties” against each other, says Manu Raman, co-founder of Good hands, as aspirations clash with the want to care for the elderly.

It is here where Bangalore based startup, Good hands, wants to make a difference by providing holistic senior support spanning healthcare, emergency management, daily conveniences and social engagement through a unique blend of “high tech and high touch”.

“We started thinking about the idea about a year and a half ago,” says Raman, “We wanted to do something that had a social impact.”

This is when Raman along with fellow co-founder Dileep Ashoka began to look at senior care as an opportunity where they could provide solutions for a socially pressing matter. They knew that to get the wheels of a sustained social impact turning, a model that would be for profit and self-sufficient was warranted.

“We identified two sets of customers— the child or the sponsor and the parent or the user,” says Raman, “And both have very different expectations from us. Sponsors expect parent care to be requested through technology and delivered by us, while the parents expect the delivery of services via a human interface, through relationship managers and senior care specialists.”

High tech for the sponsor and high touch for the parents. “We are like the dependable cousin for the young adults and surrogate child for the parents,” Raman jokes.

Acting as a complete facilitator, Good hands tries to understand what kind support is being sought, connect with relevant suppliers, bring options to the table and then work with the service provider and monitor the quality. There is complete involvement in the process of providing complete care.

What is significant, is that Good hands prepares an emergency response system for every client. This a plan which is constantly updated and ready to be executed at any point—charting the medical history, which hospital the client is to be taken to, a list of possible donors and everything in-between. Seniors are simply provided with a number which they can dial to activate the response.

Self-funded till now, the fact that Good hands doesn’t own any services itself makes it asset light. The venture was launched on June 1, 2015 and is currently limited to Bangalore but plans to expand to other cities by 2016.


Tags assigned to this article:
population startups

Around The World

Advertisement