Among the crop of products and services which are catering to the wishes of younger India stand out startups like Chennai-primarily based Athulya Assisted Living serving senior citizens, who may additionally shape a niche target market now, but no longer for lengthy.India, which is home to at least one.3 billion people, is considered a younger us of a, with nearly half its population being underneath the age of 25. But this is set to change if authorities projections and the current Economic Survey are to move through. By 2050, the use of a is estimated to host almost 340 million people above the age of 60 — more than the USA’s contemporary populace! With low penetration of healthcare — one bed for 1,000 sufferers — India needs elevated investment and useful resource allocation in geriatric care. And Karthik Ramakrishnan’s Athulya Assisted Living, a geriatric care startup set up in Mylapore, Chennai, in 2017, aims to deal with this want. Functioning as a “premium assisted dwelling domestic” with a crew of professional healthcare specialists to attend to customers’ every need, the young startup has a web presence as well.
Not a nursing home
Athulya is positioned as an assisted living center and focuses on human beings dwelling overseas and busy professionals who want experts to take care of their parents. From assisted beds to high-quit ECG machines and a doctor-on-call spherical-the-clock, Athulya does all its bookings on-line, the verifications over a smartphone name, accompanied with the aid of bodily verifications as nicely. The startup costs its customers on a condominium (monthly) foundation.
“It was not easy to start up in India because there are vintage-age houses that take in humans and are not connecting the element of healthcare. Older humans need no longer only a network, however additionally the availability of doctors and nurses, and need to live within the region of a medical institution,” says Karthik N Ramakrishnan, Founder of Athulya Assisted Living.
Karthik started as a skilled doctor and is a hospital control expert with more than 10 years of administrative and medical experience. He served as the nearby lead and fellow in overall performance development for main fitness systems inside the US, including Dignity Health, Prime Healthcare Services, and Kaiser Permanente.
He also acts as a major healthcare consultant for Sri City, one of India’s largest commercial enterprise towns. Karthik is also the marketing consultant to the SRM Institute of Medical Sciences (SIMS).
End-to-quit offerings
Karthik bootstrapped the startup by way of pumping Rs 2 crore into Athulya. He does now not desire to disclose his revenue but says he is scaling up. However, teething challenges existed, particularly while convincing the kids of the startup’s audience. “It became slow going as human beings have biases toward geriatric care. Children abroad don’t recognize that parents may be cared for using experts. But, after 3 months, the first customer got here to us from Singapore,” says Karthik, including that the couple dropped their mother off at their assisted residing center. And the subsequent whiff of fulfillment in 2018 led Karthik to set up shop in the two extra suburbs of Chennai – Arambakkam and Perungudi. Today, the startup has extra than 50 people staying with them. The organization ambitions to create apps, in destiny, in which customers can take a look at their dad and mom dwelling in these assisted houses.
It currently connects its guests to hospitals by constantly checking their vitals via IoT gadgets and passing that information into the cloud. “The first step is to provide assisted care, and as we scale, we can upload extra generation,” says Karthik. Athulya has additionally released an emblem known as Healthabove60 to offer help and expertise at your step of individuals, which means the senior citizen can get care at domestic in place of living in an assisted living center.
Healthabove60 affords visits using docs, home care nursing assistants, home care attendants, physiotherapist visits, domestic blood series, medication shipping, clinical counseling, ambulance offerings, dental offerings, medical devices, and dialysis. The fee in step with year could move from $20,000 to $ hundred 000 to assist the senior citizen. “We are constructing a network too. A gift, I even have plans to amplify from 50 to one hundred beds, after which to 500 beds in 18 months and to 5,000 in 5 years,” says Karthik. The market is massive; however, regrettably, the supply is most effective three hundred,000 gadgets consistent with JLL, the actual estate consulting firm. There is a want for fast growth.
