Among the crop of services and products which are catering to the desires of younger India stand out startups like Chennai-based totally Athulya Assisted Living serving senior residents, who may additionally form a gap audience now, but now not for long.
India, which’s home to 1.3 billion humans, considers a younger usa, with almost 1/2 its population being underneath the age of 25. But that is set to change if government projections and the latest Economic Survey are to go with the aid of. By 2050, the usa is expected to host nearly 340 million human beings above the age of 60, more than the USA’s current populace!
With low healthcare penetration, one bed for 1,000 sufferers, India is already in want of accelerated funding and resource allocation in geriatric care. And Karthik Ramakrishnan’s Athulya Assisted Living, a geriatric care startup set up in Mylapore, Chennai, in 2017, targets to address this need. Functioning as a “top-class assisted dwelling home” with a team of professional healthcare professionals to attend to clients’ every want, the younger startup has an online presence as properly.
Not an old-age domestic
Athulya is placed as an assisted dwelling center and focuses on humans residing abroad and busy professionals who need experts to take care of their parents. From assisted beds to excessive-give-up ECG machines and a medical doctor on-call spherical-the-clock, Athulya does all its bookings online, the verifications over a cellphone call, observed by way of physical verifications as well. The startup prices its clients on a condo (monthly) foundation.
“It turned into no longer clean to start up in India due to the fact there are vintage-age houses that take in human beings and are not connecting the detail of healthcare. Older humans want not only a community, but also the availability of docs and nurses, and need to live in the vicinity of a health center,” says Karthik N Ramakrishnan, Founder of Athulya Assisted Living.
Karthik commenced off as a skilled doctor and is a health center management expert with more than ten years of administrative and medical enjoy. He served as the nearby lead and fellow in overall performance development for leading health systems in the US, such as Dignity Health, Prime Healthcare Services, and Kaiser Permanente.
He also acts as an important healthcare advisor for Sri City, one of India’s largest included business cities. Karthik is also the marketing consultant to the SRM Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS).
End-to-cease offerings
Karthik bootstrapped the startup by pumping Rs 2 crore into Athulya. He does no longer wish to disclose his revenue but says he is scaling up. However, teething challenges existed, specifically even as convincing the youngsters of the startup’s audience.
“It becomes slow going as people have biases towards geriatric care. Children abroad don’t recognize that parents can be cared for by way of specialists. But, after 3 months, the first consumer came to us from Singapore,” says Karthik, adding that the couple dropped their mother off at their assisted residing center.
And the following whiff of success in 2018 led Karthik to installation keep inside the greater suburbs of Chennai – Arambakkam and Perungudi. Today, the startup has more than 50 individuals staying with them. The organization aims to create apps in the destiny where customers can check their parent’s dwelling in these assisted houses.
It currently connects its visitors to hospitals using constantly checking their vitals thru IoT gadgets and passing those records into the cloud. “The first step is to provide assisted care, and as we scale, we can add extra technology,” says Karthik. Athulya has additionally launched a logo called Healthabove60 to offer guidance and understanding at your doorstep of people, which means that the senior citizen can get care at domestic instead of residing in an assisted residing center.
Healthabove60 offers visits by way of medical doctors, home care nursing assistants, domestic care attendants, physiotherapist visits, domestic blood series, medicine transport, medical counseling, ambulance services, dental offerings, scientific device, and dialysis.
The value in line with the year should cross from $20,000 to $100,000 to assist the senior citizen. “We are constructing a community too. A gift, I actually have plans to make bigger from 50 to 100 beds, after which to 500 beds in 18 months and to 5,000 in 5 years,” says Karthik. The market is large, but alas, they deliver the best 300,000 units in keeping with JLL, the actual estate consulting company. There is a need for speedy growth.
