India's First Lifestyle App For The Elderly, GenWise
Siddharth:
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Matrix Moments. I'm Siddharth Agarwal, principal at Matrix Partners leading our investments in consumer tech and space tech. Today I'm here with team GenWise. GenWise is a lifestyle app for elders. Glad to have you folks today. Let’s start with a quick round of introduction and if you could throw some light on the early days. Start with Nehul.
Nehul:
Sure. First of all, Siddharth, thank you so much for having us here. So I’ve always been a Delhite, come from a middle class family, always wanted to do something of my own. In fact my first startup was way back when I was in engineering college in 2009 when I used to design and sell embedded systems. I think after that got involved in a professional journey and realized that there is a lot of importance of a good professional career before you start up because you learn a lot on scaling up, doing basic things right, having good governance. And therefore decided to give myself space of 10-12 years before I do something of my own and here I am after 10 years doing GenWise.
Siddharth:
Awesome. Rajat.
Rajat:
Thanks, Siddharth, for having us here again. My journey has been quite similar to Nehul’s as well. I'm born and brought up in Delhi as well. I come from a business family so the [0:01:50] [Hindi Spoken] of always doing my business was there since my childhood. Technology advancement around smart phones more importantly how the app stores and the apps came about running really intrigued me. And that warranted me to be a part of the industry, learn about different apps. I got the opportunity of working in different 0-1, 1-10, 10-100 businesses and products and have been a product manager since. I think that's what’s shaped me up in my career and now is the right time to do a startup and fulfill my business ambitions.
Siddharth:
Amazing. How about you, Geetanshu?
Geetanshu:
Yeah, thanks, Siddharth, first of all thank you for inviting us. Myself, Geetanshu, born and brought up in the small town of [0:02:32] [Inaudible] and belong to a business family. So I was about 16 when dotcom crisis happened and it caught up my interest in technology. So after that I want to pursue the career in the engineering. So like I become an engineer and after completing my engineering life for approximately one year I helped my father setting up his business and learned more about how the business works in these small towns of India. How business happens in the rural area, after that so I started my career in the software engineering and from at 15 years I'm doing working with the startups like Paytm, BharatPe.
Siddharth:
Awesome. So you’ve seen multiple cycles. You have dotcom, 2008, 2009.
Geetanshu:
Yes.
Siddharth:
And it’s very interesting you guys have chosen to build for the elderly segment. I mean conventional wisdom when we talk to people is that the elderly are not really going to adopt technology, there’s no point building for them. Talk about what are the differences that you found and what gave you conviction to pick up this space.
Nehul:
So first of all, Siddharth, I think you tell me how many Whastsapp greetings do you get in a day and how many of them are from people like us and how many of them are from elders?
Siddharth:
Frankly I'm part of multiple Whatsapp groups, I think many of them are professional where I think it would be some memes but I think it’s the family groups where we have the elderly where we get all these good morning messages and I think a lot of greetings on different festivals and the like.
Nehul:
Yeah. So I think when we were doing our research on the segment we realized that it’s not that they don’t adopt technology it’s just that they use it in a different way. Their needs are different and therefore we may think that they’re not using technology but they are. In fact if we look at Facebook’s last annual report it clearly says that 45 plus, 50 plus is the largest growing segment for them now. So there are enough and more statistics around elders adopting technology. But coming back to the main question on why we picked technology so I think first is sentiment, we’re building it for our parents. Over the last 10-15 years as the revolution of smart phone and technology has come in luckily all three of us have got a chance to be in the right startups of this country and but I think we’ve seen our parents struggle a bit. It’s not that they don’t know how to use a smart phone, it’s just that products are not built keeping their need in mind. So there is a big sentiment of giving back to our parents, giving back to our elders, you know, what prompted us to choose this segment. I think but leaving that aside I think ultimately we’re building a company, we want to make money and we think this is one of the most commercially viable segment. Now if you look at wealth in the country I think in India today 50 plus average wealth is at least 10x of folks who are below 35.
Siddharth:
And is it because they’ve spent their lives say through --
Nehul:
Correct. They have more years of accumulation as compared to people like us. So I think that’s one of the primary reason, I think interestingly what is also now happening is India was youngest in 2021 and India will lose its demographic dividend in 2033. What that means is now the elderly is the fastest growing segment and therefore this is becoming one of the greater opportunities to build it. I think third if you look at interestingly in India smart phones came in 2005-2008 and people who were 35-40s which I consider as the last generation of that time which adopted smart phone are now in their 55, 60s. And even in our family we see, right, like my parents, I'm sure your parents, Geetanshu and Rajat’s parents are very comfortable with smart phones. So we don’t have to cross the bridge of teaching them how to use a smart phone. I think the problem is beyond the three apps which is Whatsapp, YouTube, and Google and now increasingly Facebook there is nothing else that they’re able to use. So I think it’s the commercial opportunity in front of us is huge. And third I think again as entrepreneurs we want to innovate I think I mean in this segment nothing is built, so anything that we’re building up is pure innovation. Even if you look at our four products, right, you don’t find them in any other app of this country. The way they’ve been thought, the way they’ve been built and I think it’s a founders’ delight if you can do something like that. So I think combining all of this we chose this segment. Just to summarize I think it was combination of sentiment, commercial opportunity and scope to innovate.
Siddharth:
Anything else that, Rajat, you or Geetanshu would like to add?
Rajat:
Absolutely. I think as Nehul was saying three apps predominantly this segment uses. Many times during my childhood I’ve had – not just childhood even recent past I’ve had my mother, father coming over to myself, my sister on small digital things and help needed around deleting storage on phone, how to share a story on Instagram which has a background music running on it, how to pay bills online, I mean my father still relies on my sister to pay her bills online. And these are small digital things which they’re hesitant to do. However they’re still glued on to their phone whether it’s like scrolling through reels or shots on YouTube, whether it’s sending Whatsapp greetings that we’ve discussed previously. Essentially products are not built for this segment and that's what we at Genwise want to change. The opportunity around innovating on building for this segment is really something which interested the three of us and I think it’s going to be an incredible journey for the three of us going forward.
Siddharth:
So talk more about this specific point, right, yes, there is adoption of a few apps that are there. But I think going deeper what are the differences in how you cater to the elders versus catering to let’s say Gen Z or a millennial population, how does it vary, what specific behavior changes or habits have you seen because of which I think they find it hard to adopt technology or what are the different kinds of interventions that are needed to serve this segment?
Rajat:
Segment Gen Zs, Gen Ys value convenience. I’ve been a product manager all my life and the first thing that’s taught to us is minimize the number of clicks, maximize the real estate on the pitch. So the [0:09:01] [Inaudible] are designed in such a way that it’s quick clicks and moving through the journey and the experience from onboarding, activation and then engagement. When it comes to the elderly segment they not only value convenience they value trust more. Information has to be provided to them more compared to a younger audience. It’s when you look at this segment the whole UI, UX we had the reimagine when we were building Genwise. It was mandated for us to do the same and when we spoke to our users we realized that audio and talking is something they’re not comfortable with. We realized reading the phone, opening up the keypad, typing on it, it’s [0:09:40] [Inaudible] for them. And we’ve build Genwise with an audio first approach, it’s like the app talks to you and guides you with regards to what you're supposed to do on the particular page and for the work flows. So audio is a big part of Genwise.
Siddharth:
Geetanshu.
Geetanshu:
So I’ll give you an example like in most of the apps which we’re seeing in India like after one or two year we completely changed the UI of the app. Think about this segment like to whom we taught, okay, if you want to use some app you’ll have to click here, here, here and then one day the complete UI will change, for them it will be completely new learning. The same thing happened with most of the mobile apps, the banking apps in India. And after three months they asked to change the password, so this is a thing we always need to take care when designing product for them like for them it is a completely new learning curve when you make any major change in the app. So, yeah, this thing we need to take care.
Nehul:
And I think just extending Geetanshu’s point, right, now all elders are on Whatsapp. If you look at Whatsapp UI from day 1 to today it’s 95-99 percent similar and that's one reason which clicks with them. If they know how to use it let’s keep it that way, do not try to change, put fancy things, it doesn’t work for them.
Siddharth:
Yeah, and we’ve all seen so many consumer apps in our ecosystem, all of us have worked together at Paytm and we’ve seen how often that UI used to change. So here is the key message that you need to maintain consistency and a different kind of user experience, maybe is it fonts, is it audio, what really has worked so far given what you’ve seen?
Rajat:
A multiple of them on a single screen frankly do not work. Even through onboarding journey let’s say you're asking for details from the user and a keyboard opens and the elder has to type through the keyboard or complete a journey it’s normal. When it comes to audio elders have been brought out, elders have started using their phones, in fact predominantly to talk. As more and more apps have come through they’ve started to operate and they’ve started to scroll through them, so the learning curve has been steadily slightly slower compared to folks like us who moved on to our apps since 2010, 2008, 2007 for that matter. However for elders this is relatively new, they started coming on to different apps in 2020, 2018 and been slightly slow. You see 33 percent of searches on Google are now happening on audio and this is in India stack by the way, globally it’s in single digits. So audio is a big hook I would say which we at Genwise are using to reach out to our users. It’s not only in the way we’re thinking about product creation it’s also in the way we want the user to be engaged on the app.
Siddharth:
Interesting. So I know all three of you were working at BharatPe before this but how did you come together, taking the plunge is not easy so talk more about how did the idea develop and how did you decide to partner up?
Nehul:
So actually we were working in even Paytm together although we never got a chance to work together but we were in Paytm at the same time and we were good friends from there. And I think I personally founders should be friends first. I think there is a lot more personal connect needed than professional when you decide to be a founder. In a professional setup as colleagues it’s a different environment but for founders there are completely different dynamics. Anyways I think so we knew each other from Paytm, in BharatPe we got a chance to work together on post pay and I think there was a growing fondness for each other in terms of how we do professionally. I think when we used to sit for our coffee breaks or other breaks this talk about we staying with our parents used to come quite often. For example Rajat and I used to discuss how we’ve not responded to multiple international job offers because we want to be in Delhi with our parents. Geetanshu in fact right now is in process of moving his parents from his hometown to Delhi and thought of taking lot of efforts to do it in terms of setting up etc. So I think it was very clear that we’re very passionate about this segment. In fact in our casual talks when we used to discuss about what we want to do as entrepreneurs Rajat and I always used to talk about doing something for elders. Our ideas used to be little different but the segment was same, and then one day we requested Geetanshu [0:14:21] [Hindi Spoken] and then he said okay, let’s do it. So that's the story basically simple and short.
Siddharth:
I mean did you guys decide on working together quite some time back and then develop the idea. So did the idea come first or was the team formed first?
Nehul:
The team came first. We were I think clear that [0:14:43] [Hindi Spoken] and then the idea came later.
Geetanshu:
So, yeah, we all three are friends for just [0:14:51] [Inaudible] one thing is very clear whenever we will do something we will do together and yeah, whether it will be Genwise or maybe some another startup but one thing is clear we will do together only.
Nehul:
I’ll just add, I think it also helps is Geetanshu is obviously techy, Rajat looks at products and I look at business. I think these are the three skills you need when you startup. Obviously later on you need a lot more but I think that also sort of helps in terms of the team dynamics.
Siddharth:
I mean I agree with you for the kind of products or the thing that you're building but e-commerce businesses and all I think the capabilities tend to be different, any advice for founders out there as they think about team dynamics and the composition of the team when they think about starting up.
Nehul:
One, I think if you're building in a specialized segment, for example, if you're building something let’s say which helps setup for entrepreneurs. You need to have expertise in that area, either you would have worked with a government scale or a private scale. So if you're building in healthcare and especially deep healthcare let’s say oncology there needs to be at least one person who has that sector expertise and then rest obviously in terms of sales, business products, that is very important. I think other than that I think when you're setting up the founding team rely strong on referrals. You know, I think the first 15 people should just straight come from referrals, ideally they should be people known to you so that you know their style of working so that you know how to get the best out of them. I think in a startup when you have 15-16 people that dependence on one person is very high and if one out of a set doesn’t perform the entire company suffers a lot. At scale it’s not that much but I think in early stage company it’s a lot. I think in our case 95 percent of our initial team is basically from our referral network. But I think even if you're hiring externally do strong referral checks. You know, it’s very, very important to do 360 reference checks before hiring anyone. Or I think have a set of values from day 1, I think what we did was on day 1 of when we launched Genwise we wrote our five values and we ensure that we do test those in each and every one who joins us. I think that's very important so that there’s a coherency in the group. I think that's it from our team side of perspective.
Siddharth:
You’ve touched upon the founding team, Rajat, any thoughts on how should one think about the founding team. Nehul’s already given us a few nuggets but when you specifically set out to build the team what were the values that you were looking at, talk more to us about that?
Rajat:
So we looked at five values, Siddharth. The first value was being connected to elders, we’re of course building an elders first platform in Genwise, right, it’s an app for the wise generation. And the first thing we look for is people who are actually connected with the elders who have respect, empathy for their elders and love for them. The second value that we look for is flexibility. Of course having worked in consumer tech you learn a certain way of catering to users and we’re not building for the common user here. We’re not building for Gen Z or Gen Y so ability to unlearn, relearn is very important to us, being flexible to those regards was the second value for us. The third value that we look for, Siddharth, is the ability to be data driven. Being a young startup you of course take calls on hypothesis, on hunches but beyond a time you’ve to listen to the customer, read between the lines, look at data and then follow up subsequently. So being data driven is really important. Fourth, tech first problem solving across the teams whether it’s the technology team, business team, marketing team, product, everyone has to be a tech first problem solver, that's the only way you can build for scale and that's the fourth value we look for. The fifth value that we have is being closure oriented, there’s no point sending across 30 messages in a group all leading to nothing so one thing we’re really, really focused on is maintaining speed to market and being closure oriented is a definite strongpoint for folks who look to join us.
Nehul:
One point to give an example of data orientation, right. So we don’t have anyone who can't write queries, it doesn’t matter and this is true for the founders also by the way.
Siddharth:
So when you say queries what do you mean?
Nehul:
Simple queries, because we don’t at least till we’re of a certain size we don’t want to hire data analysts in the company. Right now there is no data analyst, everyone does his or her queries on his own. Obviously everyone knows different level of complexities depending on their role. But that’s one example of how we have inculcated that value in everyone and it’s very tactical but it does work for us.
Siddharth:
Early on you mentioned that your relationship with your parents which kept you grounded, which kept you in Delhi, talk more about that and what did you pick up from those learnings or that relationship for you to build Genwise?
Rajat:
So being brought up in a business family meant I always wanted to start a business of my own, there was always this [0:20:09] [Hindi Spoken] inside me to do this. My father in fact started his third business when he was 45 so great determination and most importantly work ethic is what I picked up from him. Over the years we’ve already spoken about how elders have gotten glued on to technology, how simple digital use cases have been difficult to them while being comfortable using a smart phone. On the other side while all of this was happening with my parents, with elders, on the other side I was getting busier in my job with my career, after I got married I got busier with my personal life as well and I was always under this guilt trip of not doing enough for my parents, of not giving back to them that these two dual notions led to the advent of Genwise. So Genwise essentially is an app for elders, it’s a lifestyle digital first lifestyle product for elders which can help them in multiple spheres of life. And on the other side it helps younger family members stay connected with their parents, establish a deeper bond with them and most importantly take remote care of them as well.
Siddharth:
Nehul, you want to add anything on this?
Nehul:
So I think I come from a lower middle class family from Delhi, always been there. It’s a service class family, I think I’ve seen my parents struggle throughout their professional careers and yet what I saw was significant amount of time and money resources were invested on me. Just an example, my mother always wanted me to study in a particular school which is a good school in the area I live so that I have a good career even though it was a little unaffordable and she had to go through multiple things. I think what I’ve seen is once I started working on my own at least I’ve been able to solve for the money problem. But time is something I’ve not been able to give them back and I think Genwise is an attempt to do it, it’s an attempt to show care even if I'm not there it’s an attempt to make their lives easy and then it expands to the universe. So that's sort of my bit.
Siddharth:
At least you live with them, many people have gone abroad and are not living with their parents. So I think the guilt trip that they’re on is even higher so totally resonate with that.
Geetanshu:
From last 20 years I'm living with my parents because of this small town I have to move out, like from last 5 years I'm trying to convince them, okay, now you can come and live with me. But finally like hopefully next month they will come.
Siddharth:
So, guys, congrats, first of all you’ve launched the app. It’s still early days. So talk more about Genwise, is this an app more for the elderly?
Rajat:
Sure. So, Siddharth, thanks a lot. It’s been only 20 days since we’ve launched the app out and it’s available only on Android as of now, iOS app is going to be released by the end of this month as well. So Genwise is an app that we’ve conceptualized with an elder first approach but it’s an app which both elders and younger family members can have on their phones. For the elders Genwise helps them in multiple spheres of life, so it’s a lifestyle app that cuts across different needs whether it’s a social need or a finance need or a wellness need or a digital need. As a younger family member Genwise extends an opportunity for you to foster a deeper bond with your parent to take care of them remotely as well. So that's the broad genesis of how the product is conceptualized. In terms of our initial MVP rollout product we’ve come ahead with 4 different use cases, one again to match each of these four needs. And I’ll just take a brief and explain them. So for the social need we have a Whatsapp greeting product, we’ve talked about how elders are obsessed sharing Whatsapp greetings but forwarding the same stale greeting over and over again from one group to the other voids them on the social status that they so seek to derive. So our Whatsapp greetings feature provides them a curated library of greetings, helps them personalize it, add their name, audio note to it and onward share it on Whatsapp. So that's the social need product that we have. On the finance need we spoke the elders, we figured out going to banks is really inconvenient for them, logging on online on internet banking, mobile banking apps is again a challenge. So we’ve provided them an opportunity a way to convert their smart phone into a passbook where they can simply flip through pages and see their ledgers, transactions, balances. It’s only view access that we’ve given so it’s completely risk free and that's the second product which is the risk free passbook that we have. The third product that we have is a medicine reminders product where we’ve brought families back to the forefront. So an elder can send a medicine reminder for self and set an alert which can come to a younger family member to mitigate the problem of procrastination. I as a younger family member staying in a different city than my parents can also set a medicine reminder for my parent and again whether they take or do not take a medicine I’ll be alerted for the same, so that's the third product that's the medicine reminders product in the wellness category. The fourth product that we have, Siddharth, is to solve for the digital needs which is the personal assistant product. Now with Genwise each elder gets a personal assistant of their own whose always there to help you, guide you, do these small daily digital asks better so whether now it’s deleting storage on your phone, learning how to order food online, how to book cabs, how to pay bills, all of this is possible through our personal assistant.
Siddharth:
Is this more like a concierge or is this someone to assist you while doing --?
Rajat:
Siddharth, we’ve launched this as an audio platform with one audio to audio interaction the customer, the elder can talk to a GenWise Saathi, a GenWise personal assistant. And the GenWise personal assistant can help educate, can help impart learning etc, that's the free one product that we have. Soon going forward we’re also going to launch concierge on this where completion of an end to end transaction would also be possible for the elder.
Nehul:
There’s one thing I want to add here, Siddharth, I think Rajat stressed on lifestyle, why is it called a lifestyle app. I think when we started deciding on the product, when we spoke to multiple people whenever we used to speak to our friends, right, and when we say elders we used to hear back either healthcare or senior care. But when we used to speak to elders no one talked about, no one said we need healthcare or we need elder care. And I think what we realized is that you know, it’s our view of thinking that our parents or our elders need healthcare. If you talk to them they think we’re 60 years old today or 55 year old, we have 30 years of active life they need a lot more than health care. And I think that is where we have taken a bet on lifestyle and just wanted to sort of put the point across.
Siddharth:
I think just talking about you mentioned the greetings reminder, a lot is being spoken about AI, Geetanshu, have you started leveraging any of that, right, there’s so many developments that have happened over the last few months.
Geetanshu:
Yeah. AI will completely change the industry and we all have seen the kind of innovation happening in the last one year. So we have made use of AI for our text to audio conversion, for the personalized greeting messages and our complete app walk through which you have seen audio help app is completely built upon AI. Whatsapp greeting also we’re using. Gen AI for making the greetings outfit. And like so we have made custom work flows leveraging text to audio, audio to text, text to text which provide the better experience to our elder, only Genwise. And for us AI is not only the cost saver but the enabler to provide better digital experience and in the coming future you’ll even see more features coming out of Genwise using AI only. And we’re also working on how to serve the peer through AI.
Nehul:
I think in fact it’s our dream, right now the use case of personal assistant is a human. If that can be an AI and everyone has – you know, every elder in the country has their own personal AI assistant I think that is a complete white space where we want to deliver.
Siddharth:
Amazing. Hope that materializes soon. I think coming to the next point which is more around venture capital a lot is raising funds is celebrated, a lot is talked about venture capital firms. Talk about the dynamics between a VC and a founder.
Nehul:
I mean you're wearing GenWise Tshirt, I think we need not say more. But I think I’ll talk about how we perceive relationship with between Genwise and Matrix and more personally with you, Siddharth. I think from day 1 the kind of support we have got, in fact I remember our first meeting when we were pitching the idea. Not even pitching the idea, the idea was half baked and you were almost sort of helping us, you can maybe do this etc. I think for us Matrix is a core co-founder in the company not a VC. Having said that we’re putting sweat equity you're putting real money, there is a commitment that we have towards Matrix in terms of delivering returns. And I think even before that I think that's a little far away in terms of running the company properly right and I think that's what we intend to do. I personally believe the way we try to work with Matrix it’s be forthcoming, be open, be upcoming on the challenges, on the milestones and then build together. That's how we would like to operate.
Siddharth:
Awesome, man. The privilege is all ours partnering with you guys. Coming to the last question from my side, right, understanding what’s next for Genwise I know still early days but for Genwise as a company and for you any personal goals that you have for the next year?
Rajat:
So, Siddharth, currently GenWise is an invite only platform being just launched. The idea to keep it invite only is to be close to our customers to understand what they’re liking, what they’re not liking. What makes them come on the app again and again and once we understand that our track metrics get sorted on that is when we open the app across to everyone. In the near term we’re only doing iOS app and we’re building a content feature where we disseminate information about online frauds happening against elders so these are the two new things coming across so we need to stay focused on matrix. In parallel we three as founders we aspire to instill a philosophy of AI first thinking data driven approach in our teams as well. So the next three months for us is going to be focused on achieving the product market fit for Genwise.
Siddharth:
Awesome. Thanks for coming in, guys. Really, really appreciate it. And as I mentioned couldn’t be happier, very, very glad to be part of this and really looking forward to using this app for myself with my parents and I think spreading it across the families.
