As the country edges towards an aging population, startups that provide elder care services are steadily increasing their user base while attracting more investor eyes and funding dollars. Data from Tracxn shows that funding in Indian elder care companies jumped to $23.8 million in 2023, compared to $13.4 million last year and just $1.5 million in the year before that. New-age companies such as SeniorWorld, Emoha, GenWise, 60Plus India “Elders often show strong loyalty to a single application, unlike Gen-Z who frequently shift between different apps. Therefore, if your app becomes one of the few they truly depend on, it could eventually solve all their needs,” said Siddharth Agarwal, principal, Matrix Partners India, which recently led a $3.5 million funding round in GenWise. The elder care segment can be broadly divided into tech-enabled services and non-tech services such as assisted living facilities, senior care homes, in-home care assistants, and retirement housing. Tech-enabled services can include healthcare and fintech-focused solutions tailored for the elderly. At present, there are 149 million people aged 60 years and above in India, comprising around 10.5% of the country’s population, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s India Ageing Report 2023. The report projects that by 2036, this share will go up to 14.9% of the population, and by 2050, it will double to 20.8%, with the absolute number at 347 million. “The age structure of the population is changing owing to demographic transition with increasing levels of life Although the segment is relatively small at present, investors are optimistic about its growth in the next few decades. One such investor, venture capital firm Gruhas – led by Abhijeet Pai and Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath – sees growing demand for senior housing due to increasing life expectancy, lower mortality rates, rising nuclear families, and changing social stigma around senior living. Along with Zerodha’s investment arm Rainmatter Capital, Gruhas recently led a $11 million pre-Series B funding round for Emoha’s parent entity, Age Care Labs, which also owns assisted living facility Epoch Elder Care. “We are focused on the unique healthcare needs of India’s senior population, with 170 million children seeking the best for their parents and 42 million elders in urban India alone,” said co-founder Abhijeet Pai. While the social stigma around placing aging parents in senior care homes is still present in tier II and III cities, the demand is strong in urban areas. “Demand for assisted living services mostly comes from people whose children have left the country, which is primarily tier I cities with a large NRI segment,” said Sanjeev Kumar, founder and chief executive officer of NEMA Elder Care. He points out that demand for such services in southern states such as Kerala is more mature than in the rest of the country, while cities such as Kolkata, Pune, Gurgaon, and Chandigarh are also showing positive trends. As for tech-enabled elder care services, the segment saw a fundamental shift in consumer behavior during the pandemic, when parents and grandparents were forced to learn certain apps to adapt to the sudden shift to online services for basic needs such as groceries. This opened up possibilities for startups One such company is New Delhi-based GenWise, which offers services such as personalized WhatsApp greetings, short-form video content relevant for seniors, online advisors for companionship, a single platform to view several bank passbooks and medicine reminders on its mobile app
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