We’re thrilled to announce our investment in Primus Senior Living, which reimagines eldercare with a full-stack platform.
Charting the Senior Living Landscape
In late 2023, Priya and Neeraj convened the “Builder’s Collective” for a select group of founders and CXOs of scaled global and Indian companies. The goal of the gathering was to align on the central question:
“If there was one problem in India you could build around, what would it be?”
Among the problem statements that were discussed, one idea that really resonated with everyone in the Collective was building a solution for India’s “elders”. With many of our parents in age groups 70 and beyond, and with some of us staying miles away from them in different geographies, thoughts about their health and spirit were a constant worry!
Intrigued, we began a long process of market discovery. We learned that our elder population (people over 60 years of age) will increase from 149 million to 347 million1 by 2050. However, the needs of this emerging and growing population are not met by existing social constructs, healthcare infrastructure, and familial support mechanisms. The urgency of addressing the needs of our aging population is underscored by the growing trend of nuclearization of families and the increasing number of seniors living alone, without the traditional support system of a joint family.
Two important learnings emerged from this process - a) there are three fundamental pillars of trust for an elder - Health, Home and Personal Finance and b) many of the current solutions, while highly relevant to solve ‘a’ problem for the elder, may not allow for ‘full agency’ due to discoverer/buyer and user disconnect - think buying that amazing wearable-device for your mom only for her to forget charging the device after Day 2!
Enter Primus
Through our work, Priya and team met an exceptional founder, Adarsh Narahari, who was thinking holistically about solving these problems. As a second generation residential home developer and chairman of the Association of Senior Living India (ASLI), Adarsh was intimately familiar with the problem space and had a history of championing thoughtful, full-stack solutions for elders starting with the home. Adarsh leveraged his experiences to build his first senior community in Bangalore — Primus Senior Living. Completely bootstrapped, the Primus community has 163 homes with 330 elders, with a median age of 70. We were extremely impressed with Adarsh’s sheer passion and felt that his vision to build a marquee brand that allowed elders to age in a dignified manner aligned perfectly with our responsible innovation ethos. In early 2024, we stacked hands on leveraging the existing Primus community to incubate a new, full-stack services offering.
Reimagining India’s Eldercare
India’s focus on eldercare has been more indexed towards “non-active” elders in offering hospice, dementia and palliative care and even in these solutions, we have a fair bit of unmet demand to be solved for. On the other hand, there are emerging tech-first solutions that are solving single point problems such as for ‘commerce for elder products’ ; where often the agency for the purchase rests with the children, often causing the buyer-user disconnect.
Hence, there is a need for a comprehensive full-stack solution for our “active-elders” that leverages data and technology in a form that offers them full agency and convenience while solving for their core lifestyle needs of health, purpose and community.
Building India’s Most Trusted Full-Stack Eldercare Platform
With “elder-home” as an anchor, Primus will create greenfield and brownfield elder-home projects.Powered by an independent operating company, serving elders both within and outside of Primus communities, this company will develop a) a proprietary technology backed system custom-built to suit the unique needs of our elders, and b) proprietary home designs, standard operating process and care plans that deliver the following;
- Unique home solutions that are designed for our elder needs
- Personalized care plans that focus on wellness programs, preventive health, health monitoring, and disease management both within Primus homes and outside
- Nurturing vibrant and connected communities
- Curated experiences that promote joy & purpose
Primus’ long-term vision is to pioneer a new model for 1 million of India’s elders in the next 5-7 years with a “one-stop-shop” eldercare platform that holistically transforms how Indians age. We are excited to work with Primus to expand that concept to foster intergenerational communities where meaningful connections are forged, while centering around the unique needs of elders.
More importantly, leveraging GC’s experience in building health ecosystems globally, Primus plans to mirror our Health Assurance ecosystem approach, partnering with key healthcare providers to ensure elders receive the high-quality care they deserve.
In line with GC’s thesis on intentional investing and responsible innovation, solving for our elders creates a multi-generational impact that goes beyond the economic rewards.
Reimagining elder care and health is core to our Health Assurance thesis, and we could not be more excited to create more joyful and dignified experiences for Indian elders with this team.
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