Testing and scaling business ideas as Director and Co-founder of Parikrama Active Ageing.

MY ROLE

ENTREPRENEUR

BUSINESS MANAGER

INNOVATION STRATEGIST

I co-founded and was a Director of Parikrama Active Ageing, a company with the mission of creating an ecosystem for the growing elderly population of India.

THE CHALLENGE

 

In 2016, the geriatric medical, financial, housing and transportation system were virtually non-existent in India. There were no commercially viable products or services addressing the needs of this group. The aim was to create a profitable and sustainable business that caters to the needs of seniors and increases their standard of living.

The challenge required innovation in desirability, viability as well as feasibility because of the unique stand-point the user group had with technology and the unorganised nature of the sector.

MY APPROACH

 

I leveraged my strategic design and agile methodology experience to define our process and map the ecosystem. After research and business model workshops we initiated co-creating solutions with our user group.

I then became responsible for both scaling the team to deliver, and manage a sustainable business. Over the following months, I hired new engineers, senior companions and customer service representatives to run our operations.

MEET OUR SENIORS

MY LEARNINGS

What I am proud of

  • I learnt to grasp different skillsets easily. From being a researcher and designer, I had to extend into the roles of a salesperson, product manager, negotiator, HR and team leader. I learnt to look at product development from a holistic perspective. I became resilient, self-motivated, adaptive and an initiator.

  • Created a team that was truly passionate for the senior space and believed in it. In a year’s time, the brand had become a part of the local senior community.

  • We were able to orchestrate testing of 15+ hypotheses in a lean and inexpensive way. We ran business model workshops, prioritised hypotheses to test > created prototypes and cost sheets > ran the prototype > grouped to discuss the impact.

  • Formed collaborations/partnerships with assistive tech companies and senior clubs to uncover new business opportunities and accelerate reach to product-market fit.

Lessons learnt

  • Didn’t address the scalability issue with the business models we were testing and considering early on.

  • Failed to say "no" sooner to investor direction/ideas that were not positively contributing to our vision.