Positive ageing: It takes a village to age well

“Don’t let your age weigh you down. Even now I feel there’s so much to do,” says Kanta Agarwala, 70, from Siliguri, West Bengal. In May, Agarwala took part in a beauty contest, Seenager Queen 2024, held for women aged 45 and above. Voted the second runner-up with the title of “Graceful Glamour”, Agarwala and the other contestants were groomed by Kuntanil Das, chief executive officer of a design school, IFM Academy in Siliguri, who also encouraged them to sign up for a free month-long interior design course at his institute. There were 50-55 contestants, 13 of them over the age of 65. “It brought out the child in us,” says Agarwala. The grandmother of four believes that if an opportunity comes along, and if there’s even a smidgen of self-belief to take it on, one should go ahead. “If you participate, it may not lead to awards, but you will learn something.”

An enthusiasm to learn has been central to Agarwala’s life. In 2021, at the age of 67, she picked up her harmonium, which had been lying unused since she got married after her class X exams, and signed on a tutor to re-start her music practice. “Mujhe bas khushi milti hai (it makes me happy),” she says.

Agarwala probably doesn’t think of her life in these terms, but what she is practising is “positive ageing”, a conscious way of living that involves maintaining a positive attitude and healthy lifestyle as one ages, while committing to being physically, socially and cognitively active. As populations around the world live longer, ageing is seen as an active life-stage with its own needs, demands, benefits and challenges rather than a passive one, during which only the basics need to be covered.

Nowhere is this shift in mindset more necessary than in India, where many still fall into prevailing norms of passively existing rather than actively living. According to the United Nations Population Fund’s India Ageing Report 2023, released in September last year, India had 149 million persons aged 60 and above in July 2022, representing around 10.5% of the country’s population, and the number is slated to grow to over 220 million by 2036, or approximately 15% of the population. A concept like positive ageing percolating into mainstream thinking could create social change and reduce healthcare and eldercare demands on society.

It is already a way of life for many seniors, who see the post-retirement stage as an opportunity for growth and meaning; now, an ecosystem is growing to help them. “Positive ageing is all about doing the things you want to do, not what society tells you to do,” says Neeraj Sagar, founder of WisdomCircle, a post-retirement work marketplace. WisdomCircle is a digital platform that connects retired professionals with organisations for work opportunities. Its motto is to make retirement a choice by helping retired professionals to find ways to work flexibly, network with peers and learn new skills. “For me, the No.1 hallmark of positive ageing is being curious. Curiosity, the urge to learn new things, these are the bedrock,” says Sagar, 53, a former leadership hiring expert. He started WisdomCircle in 2022 when he noticed that even as life expectancy rises, more of the population faces cognitive decline. “Post-retirement is not preparing for an end-of-life scenario anymore. With life expectancy going up, medical science making rapid advances, at 50 you need to be thinking about how your life is going to look for the next 50 years. You need to plan for that,” says Sagar.

WisdomCircle has over 60,000 people (aged 50-75) signed up for work assignments, and places them in companies such as Schneider Electric, Thyssenkrupp, Blue Star and Daimler. Piyali Sen, 63, a Bengaluru-based marketing and communications professional who has worked on three assignments via WisdomCircle, says the aspect of work she enjoys most is connecting with younger people and staying in touch with new tools and technology. “The other day, a young colleague asked me if I was on Threads, and I didn’t even know what it was. Within a few days, I was active on it. Similarly with ChatGPT—it has been fun learning how it can be used as a communication tool,” says Sen. “At the same time, I am enjoying the flexibility of retirement...recently I took a break from work to go to the US for my daughter’s wedding. But without work and learning new things, I would feel out of touch, obsolete, and that would be really bad for me after working my entire life.”

Also read: Healthy ageing: A three-step plan to live longer

Spending time with young minds creates a sense of vitality among seniors, and seeing how young people are dealing with things in fresh ways keeps the brain alive and kicking, says Mumbai-based psychotherapist and Lounge columnist Sonali Gupta. A theme that Gupta has noticed during therapy with her older and younger clients is the scope for forming intergenerational friendships. “It could happen in unexpected ways, in a space like a gym. These friendships—or intergenerational camaraderie—is an exchange of wisdom and perspective, and benefits both groups.”

WisdomCircle is part of a rapidly growing startup segment in India: “age-tech”, or companies built around providing for the needs of seniors. There are around 125 companies in the sector, according to startup tracking platform Tracxn, and while many are focused on basic needs such as healthcare, security and concierge services for the elderly, several are in the business of creating meaningful online communities and spaces for senior citizens that help them keep growing.

“We need to change the narrative around ageing. The prevalent narrative is that as you age, you start getting excluded—from fun, from playfulness, from fashion, and financial autonomy. The problem is we start believing that narrative, so it becomes a chicken-and-egg situation,” says Meenakshi Menon, 65, journalist, social activist and the founder of GenS, a Mumbai-based age-tech startup focused on building online and offline communities for people who are 60-plus. “Don’t keep saying the old are feeble, they need care, they need security—because everyone needs healthcare, safety and security. I am 65, I love my life, doing exciting stuff, being inspiring and inspired,” says Menon, a deep-sea diver and organic farmer who has worked in women’s health and environmental conservation. GenS is in the process of launching an app called GenSxtyTribe in 12 Indian languages that aims to “reimagine 60+ with tech and community” by creating a supportive ecosystem focused on learning, events, travel, entertainment as well as financial growth and health.

Menon, a savvy marketer, understands that this generation is under-represented as a consumer demographic, while it has more purchasing power than younger generations, and has plans to develop brand collaboration within the app as well. “Brands and the marketplace have neglected this 150-million strong cohort with disposable incomes that they should be lusting after. But they don’t create products for older citizens because they are afraid of being typecast as a ‘senior brand’. We want to change the perspective of looking at seniors as passive consumers to very active consumers,” says Menon.

GenS is not the first company that is using technology to build communities for seniors. Companies like Khyaal and GenWise, both early entrants to the age-tech sector in the communication and community-building space for seniors, have received funding—Khyaal, launched in 2020, to the tune of $4.2 million (around ₹35 crore) from Titan Capital and others, while GenWise, launched in 2023, raised $3.5 million in a funding round led by Matrix Partners recently.

Hemanshu Jain, Khyaal’s founder, was motivated by his father’s experience during covid-19 to build the app, which works as an online club of sorts, offering workshops and learning sessions, on-demand assistance, and secure payments for seniors through a pre-paid card powered by Visa. “I used to travel extensively for work and my father would call me up to do basic chores like renewing the subscription for his OTT platforms or recharging his phone. This was a regular occurrence and I could clearly see the dependence that he had on me to do these simple things,” says Jain.

“We (the founders of the company) eventually understood that every senior was struggling to do things independently. They don’t want to be dependent on their kids to solve everything for them, but navigating the digital world can be challenging, especially these days when financial fraud that specifically targets seniors is so rampant,” says Jain.

Apart from the pre-paid Khyaal card that is aimed at making seniors feel confident about making online purchases, the subscription-based Khyaal app (at ₹999 a month) shares videos about financial literacy and conducts workshops and live online sessions on these and a variety of other subjects. It has around 1.1 million members. “When we were building in the age-tech sector, we saw that most existing companies were in the caregiving, assisted living type of sectors. There were very few lifestyle-oriented platforms,” says Jain.

There is a tendency to see the entire 50-plus segment as a monolith, says Sagar. “It’s a flawed way of thinking. There are ‘handover segments’ in between, and every five years after 50 is different, with different needs and interests. The mindset shifts every five years, and the seeds of positive ageing have to be planted between 50 and 60,” he adds.

There is a growing need for autonomy among Indian seniors, feels Niranjan Vemulkar, founder of Yellow, a digital platform for legacy and estate planning solutions founded in 2021. “Planning succession—at the most basic level, making a will—is a part of ageing well. The sense that I have put everything in order gives you mental peace as well as a sense of autonomy over the future, knowing that these important decisions have been made by you independently,” says Vemulkar.

The older generation is also getting smartphone savvy, says Nehul Malhotra, founder of Genwise, an online social club for elders with 1.5 million members. “There is a change in the social mindset in India among elders where they prioritise living well instead of thinking that they need to leave behind financial assets for their kids. Today, one-third of all tourism in India is done by people over 50, and the age-tech sector has a huge market to service as more and more people enter the 50-75 demographic,” says Malhotra.

A scroll through GenWise’s events calendar shows events such as “Learn to book flight, train and bus tickets”, and “Learn how to do online shopping” among storytelling, poetry and music sessions. Some of these online sessions are live, and others, pre-recorded. The company also plans to hold offline meet-ups in the future. Users can attend five-six sessions a day through the app, most of which are free—the revenue model is micro-transactions for some paid workshops, customised greeting cards and their unique Saathi programme, reveals Malhotra.

Genwise Saathi is an emotional support programme for elders, where trained individuals (though not all are accredited counsellors/therapists, Malhotra clarifies) offer conversation and support on a variety of issues, such as family and relationship struggles, support through grief, lack of motivation and loneliness. “Sometimes people just need an objective listener who will respect their privacy… someone to talk to apart from family,” Malhotra explains . Many of the calls are about conflict within the family, and dealing with feelings of redundancy). “The Saathis are trained to listen for more serious issues, in which case they refer the client to professionals.” While the first Saathi call is free, the company charges ₹4 per minute thereafter. They typically get 1,500 calls a day.

While platforms create an ecosystem of support in a structured way, some seniors have found companionship and built strong communities on their own. In 2016, a group of people who had graduated from the Assamese-medium Jamuguri Higher Secondary School in the picturesque village of Jamugurihat in Assam, 50 years earlier, decided to mark the milestone year by connecting with former teachers and batchmates and organising a reunion. Known as the “’76 Group”, they stay in touch over WhatsApp with this ad hoc support group. When a beloved batchmate died, they banded together for visits and to collect funds. Monalisa Hazarika, a ‘76 alumna, says, “In a matter of few years, we have become one another’s companions through the upheavals of life.”

Any act of service leaves you with a sense of engagement and fulfilment, says Gupta. “It doesn’t allow you to be in a space where you’re constantly caught up in your own bubble. It is not just about filling up empty time; you are paying it forward.” She has observed that her relatively older clients have more time, wisdom and resources, and service is not limited to organised charity work, and includes informal service like driving a neighbour to the doctor, airport or bank, and teaching a friend’s grandchildren. “Service can also translate to throwing a milestone birthday party for an elderly neighbour who lives by themselves and has trouble walking,” says Gupta.

shrabonti.b@livemint.com