Settled in big cities for work, most of the youngsters come across the fear and worry on how their ageing parents manage living by themselves. Santosh Abraham, Co-Founder, ElderAid Wellness also faced the same fear for his ageing parents in Trivandrum during his stay in Bangalore. Though he has a good family network back home, Santosh was hesitant to ask his relatives to go home and check on them often. Stayed long in the IT city, he saw that a lot of people are travelling and adopting the nuclear family concept. Always had a desire to do something that has social impact and add value to people’s life, Santosh did a deep research on the market and started ElderAid Wellness in 2015 as a social healthcare enterprise to cater the elderly needs through at-home end-to-end services.

This company acts as ‘proxy child’ to elders and becomes a companion who takes them for outings, movies, musicals, hobby classes & other fun activities they enjoy, and spends time with elders having nobility issues to take their loneliness away. “We focus on not just their healthcare, but also emotional wellness. We facilitate elders to ‘live life fully’ by helping them live an active life and give a better quality of life that increases their longevity and adds value,” says Santosh.

We facilitate elders to ‘live life fully’ by helping them live an active life, & give a better quality of life that increases their longevity and adds value

Round the clock Assistance

ElderAid offers a subscription-based round-the-clock service, where it takes detailed information of people on their medical history, family situations and so on, which helps them to efficiently address the member’s needs. In case of emergency situations like hospitalization, the care managers call ambulance and inform to the immediate family members and do all the running for registration, paper work, and take care of their day-to-day necessities at house. For elders suffering from post-retirement depression, the care managers do monthly phone check, take them to counselors and provide therapy if necessary. Be it any emergency situation, ElderAid always responds to the members concerns. Santosh recalls an instance, where a member called ElderAid at 1.30 pm when somebody was trying to break into the house, and his team reached them as soon as possible.

Supporting Elders

Among the various elder care packages ElderAid offers, comfort pack (Rs.1900 p.m.) and premium pack (Rs.7200 p.m.) are the most popular ones. The comfort pack comprises of emergency assistance, medical history documentation, two visits by care manager, weekly telephone checking and so on. Whenever the care managers visit the elders, they check BP, take them to hospital visits or counselors monthly twice or daily according to their need. ElderAid also customizes plans according to the members, which is a fast-moving pack where they choose just the required services and charged accordingly. The company refrains from collaborating with doctor or hospitals, but provides information to members and recommends doctors to them and allows them take their own decision. “We just provide facilities. Since healthcare is very subjective, we only recommend the best and stay away from tie-ups,” says Santosh.

Knowing that elders, i.e., their end customers don’t use much of technology, the company sends all updates to their children over WhatsApp and others. Recently, ElderAid raised funds from Angel Funding to expand its services across Bangalore. With a 25-30 percent growth YOY, the company has longstanding plans to spread its services to 8-10 cities across India, predominantly in the South.