The city is witnessing a new demographic trend. With increase in life span and their children moving out of home in pursuit of their career or education, senior citizens living independently have a whole gamut of issues to tackle on their own in their daily lives.
Healthcare issues apart, they worry about leading a hassle-free, quality life with age catching up and their children living away.
Right from fixing a plumbing problem or calling a carpenter to booking tickets online for travel and going to the cinema or a restaurant or even attending a social do, there are any number of occasions when the elderly look for help.
The biggest of all issues for senior citizens is the dread of leading a monotonous, lonely life, confined mostly to their homes rather than stepping out on their own in a city where managing traffic and logistics is a pain even for the younger populace.
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While there are assisted living homes coming up exclusively for the elderly to move into with centralised services, surveys show a significant percentage of senior citizens prefer to live in their own homes and in localities they are familiar with but wish there was a younger person around that they could trust to be their ‘Man Friday’.
On the other side of the spectrum are the NRIs and the segment of younger population living far from their parents and home-town. They can’t give up their careers to be physically closer to their parents — many parents themselves wouldn’t want their children to compromise on their career prospects — but concerned all the same for their ageing parents who have to manage everything on their own, from household chores to stressful situations that can arise unexpectedly.
Care and warmth
Providing a solution to both groups, a concept took shape three years ago in Hyderabad to provide one-stop care solution platform for elders.
Prashanth Reddy, who founded Anvayaa in 2016 to ensure the well-being of the elderly, said the concept was borne out of his own experience of staying away from his ageing parents.
With 25 years of experience in IT, market research and telecom verticals abroad and in India, he conceived Anvayaa as a technology-enabled personalised solution provider. “Our endeavour is to recreate the experience of warmth, safety and comfort the elderly get from their children,” he says.
He developed a digital platform dedicated to extend any kind of service, from health care to daily needs services, supported by a mobile phone app and a web portal with 24×7 support centre. While technology makes it convenient to reach out to the elderly instantly through a network of vendor partners, Anvayaa’s USP is its team of dedicated care managers who assist and engage with the elderly signing up with the platform.
Building a rapport
“We have 45 dedicated care managers who spend four to five hours once a month with each of the 800-plus member families in Hyderabad. They go to the assigned family, talk to them and spend time listening to them, understand their requirements or errands to be completed and bring in required service provider or they do it themselves. Children of the senior citizens enrol them with us, but sometimes the elders do it themselves.”
And it is not always NRIs who seek services. Even 30% of local people have engaged care managers to make life easy for their parents.
Anvayaa has tied up with 150-plus registered vendor partners in multiple categories and utility services to get genuine services from reliable service providers.
The services range from mundane household tasks to booking online doctor appointments, diagnostic and pharmacy services, home healthcare services, to social engagement services.
It has different annual subscription plans from ₹45,000 to ₹1.25 lakh depending on services needed.
“Our market research showed that only 30% are healthcare needs, the rest are issues of loneliness and logistics management. The dedicated managers are trained for 1.5 months, made to work under an existing care manager for another month and then assigned to a family,” says Mr. Reddy.
Emergency plan
A pre-created emergency plan is in place for each family based on security and health profiling. The response plan is pre-mapped and unveiled automatically whenever the situation demands it,
The children of elderly members get an alert and updates on the app and they can track online how the Anvayaa team is handling and helping their parents. “We have 2,850 ambulances registered in Hyderabad, Chennai and Bangalore, apart from 200 super specialists, We have handled 100-plus health emergencies and 98% of lives were saved through prompt service. Average response time is not more than three minutes,” he asserts.
A manager is assigned to a family within a 5-km radius of their home and will be the first to reach them in case of an emergency and handle the situation as per the protocol.
Source: The Hindu
