SeniorWorld headquartered in Gurgaon, speaks of its underlying philosophy, it is Indian company established to cater to the overall needs of seniors. Indian seniors’ lives are getting re-shaped like never before. With more & more people living well into their 80’s & 90’s, the 60+ group is today the fastest growing segment of India. So much so, that there are more than 6 lakh Indians over the age of 100.
Their ideology speaks that Indian seniors aspire to get a lot more from life, and also wish to give back a lot more to society. The mission is to enable them to do both. They also believe that India’s current ecosystem of products and solutions for seniors is completely unprepared for their burgeoning needs.
Their mission is to become India’s most preferred destination for seniors. They are building a wide range of products, services and engagement avenues for seniors, with the support of like-minded partners. Through these, they aspire to create an ecosystem that supports seniors in ageing positively and leading more fulfilling lives.
SeniorWorld was inspired by seniors who wish to redefine the retired person stereotype and live their life to the fullest. The vision is to enable India's seniors to lead more active, engaged, independent and fulfilling lives. They plan to achieve this by providing content, products, services and engagement avenues that impact the lives of our seniors and their families positively.
Sujata Sangwan Interacts With Rahul Gupta, Co-Founder & CEO, SeniorWorld And Spoke To Him
About SeniorWorld, its business and productsGrowing at double the growth rate of India’s total population, Seniors have unique needs of their own, and they’re making them clearer with every new generation.
SeniorWorld is India’s only company focussed on the holistic needs of Seniors, from health and wellness to technology to lifestyle. Outside of products and services, we also provide content and engagement avenues that will help seniors lead more active, engaged, Independent and fulfilling lives. We launched our first product easyfone in Oct 2015. We launched Preventive Health Packages designed for Seniors in May, and in June, we’ve just launched Holiday Packages for Seniors.
SeniorWorld was started by MP Deepu, my friend and ex-colleague at Airtel and myself.
What's the story behind this start?I have just touched 50 and am a part of a pretty large extended family from both sides of my parents. One could clearly see that there were lots of un-fulfilled needs, outside of some basic stuff that one saw elders struggle with. We had a couple of ideas that we were evaluating and while the others seemed to have a shorter curve, we kept coming back to this one – as outside of making good commercial sense, it was also going to be something that was going to be more fulfilling and socially impactful. And like I keep telling my much younger co-founder, I wanted the eco-system to be more senior friendly by the time I reached my seniorhood.
What's the USP of your business / products?We are solely focussed on Indian Seniors and therefore we design and conceptualize products and services keeping ONLY seniors and their requirements in mind. Our focus is on providing great quality products and also in designing the entire lifecycle of the product and experience keeping seniors in mind
So if you were to look at the easyfone and compare it with other products, you will immediately see why it is India’s most senior friendly phone.
Our Preventive Health checkup packages are endorsed by the Geriatric society of India for having the tests that are relevant for seniors. In addition, we have tied up with only NABL certified Labs so that the quality is right so that Seniors get added peace of mind.
How do you plan your marketing activities? What were the strategies that are /were successful for your business?Marketing our products is challenging and fun. Many buyers are not the consumers themselves as they are buying for their elderly parents and family members. So, our communication has to be tied with their needs and concerns for their parents. For the easyfone, we offer a 21-day, no questions asked “money back guarantee” if our customers are not satisfied with the easyfone for any reason. That is a reflection of our confidence in our product and it has helped us build trust with our customers.
At the same time, it’s supremely important that Seniors relate with our brand and our offerings. For the digital Seniors, we connect with them on Social Media, primarily Facebook. This has worked great for us. We’ve got terrific response from Seniors on Social Media… Seniors give their comments thoughtfully, are ever-ready to adopt new ways of thinking, and they have a great sense of humour. In fact, as per a lot of Industry benchmarks, our FB community of Seniors is the probably India’s most engaged social community.
How have you been adopting technology in your business?Technology will be playing a key role in our business model, both as an enabler as well as part of product and services portfolio. While lots of tools are available, the challenge though will remain on how to keep it simple for our segment, which may be a little technology “shy” because of a variety of reasons. We have a 360 approach when it comes to technology and the emphasis will also be on technology adoption.
What are the challenges you are facing?Like any venture catering to a completely new set of needs and market, we are constantly exploring the best ways to reach our customers. Mass advertising for a niche segment is a pretty expensive way to reach customers and a lot of traditional digital marketing tools like search marketing are not necessarily very relevant in our business as the products are new and address the hitherto unaddressed needs that have not been spelt out.
The seniors segment on the Internet is also not large, so we do reach out to adult children to enhance awareness about Seniorworld and our products. We have the double responsibility, and hence challenge, of first convincing the adult children to invest their trust in us by buying our products for Seniors in their family, and then to also win the trust of Seniors through their ultimate usage of our products and services.
There is also a paucity of products/services that have been specifically designed/ created for seniors, so we are also working with some companies to create products/ services for seniors. The good news is that there are some companies which are beginning to look at this space we expect the pace to only accelerate.
Another interesting challenge is how we reach seniors who are not online... and we are working on some pretty creative models to do that.
How the fund requirements are meeting?We are currently self-funded and will start talking to Investors shortly.
Milestones / achievementsOur first product “easyfone” is positioned as India’s most senior friendly phone with the objective of enhancing Independence and safety for seniors – two things that are extremely important to them. The easyfone has received good reviews and tons of ‘gratitude’ mails from thankful sons and daughters, whose parents finally have a mobile phone that they can operate easily (‘operate’ here means reading, dialling, typing, hearing and calling for help) and have conversations with their families.
Any provider feels great when they receive good feedback about their products and services…. But to know that we’ve eased the process of having “being in touch with elderly parents”, (a need that is very strong) is especially gratifying. At the end of the day, its “achcha kaam” and that’s a great achievement.
Even when it comes to Holiday packages, Seniors were usually one small segment that major players service as an afterthought. The initial response to our Holiday Packages has been encouraging and we know we’ve just touched the tip of the iceberg
One other thing that we are really proud of is our 68000+ strong community of seniors on our FB page which is growing at a fast pace. From the benchmarking that we have done through tools available from 3rd party providers, it possibly is the most engaged community on FB in India across segments....The level of engagement and participation is fantastic and heart warming and we keep introducing fresh content to keep the engagement high...
How do you see the current market scenario?We see the Indian market for Seniors’ products and services at a very exciting growth phase. In terms of pure numbers, Seniors are growing at more than double the growth rate of the Indian population and people over 60 will comprise a fifth of Indian population in the next 3 decades. With increasing awareness, Seniors’ growing independence and proliferation of nuclear families in India, the needs are evolving very quickly. There are challenges that I have articulated before and this is a long term market requiring patience and resilience and having entered this now, we think that will be defining many best practices in terms of designing for and marketing to Seniors.
How satisfying is the role of an entrepreneur?Very exciting and satisfying. And for our segment, even more so as we also get a lot of blessings from our customers and their families. No two days are exactly the same and one also gets to work closely with young, passionate, bright and committed team members who are constantly challenging us and help me and Deepu keep our thinking fresh. As an entrepreneur in the Seniors’ space, I can happily say that opportunities always far exceed the time available and so one needs to prioritize his tasks and focus areas ruthlessly.
Your advice for budding entrepreneurs?Chase your dreams. There’s no better time to pursue your passions than now. Focus on the customer and fundamentals. Be resilient - there are no shortcuts to success.
How do you see your business in the next 3 years? What are your future plans of expansions?
We have a pipeline of some pretty exciting products and services that will be launched this year. Some of these will be targeted at the “young seniors”, which itself is a pretty large segment. These products will address needs of seniors across technology, wellness and lifestyle. Outside of products and services, we are also working on enhancing our content and also creating more engagement avenues for seniors. From a geographical standpoint, we already sell easyfone across the country and that will be true for most of the products that we will be introducing.
