For its admirable notion of offering companionship as a service to older people who experience loneliness in old age, the startup Goodfellows made it to the headlines and into many people’s hearts. Moreover Ratan Tata supports the startup “Senior Companionship Goodfellows” .
Shantanu Naidu, a Cornell University MBA graduate who has been closely collaborating with the Tata group for years, presented the project. Former Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata, who declared that he would be actively investing in the business, supported the idea put forth by their employees.
In addition, Shantanu Naidu founded the programme “Motopaws,” which aimed to develop circuits and innovate in order to reduce the number of human-animal collisions that occur in the nation. Ratan Tata, who shared the founder’s compassion for the homeless, provided additional funding for this project.
Goodfellows and Its Unique Approach to Elderly Health
According to Shantanu, the startup’s creator, over 50 million older individuals live alone and have nobody with whom to share their life. Many older people experience this sensation of loneliness as a result of losing a partner or friend; their family moving away; or even moving to distant areas for work-related reasons. The startup aims to address how this lack of company affects their emotional and physical wellbeing.
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Shantanu says, the business is aware that various individuals define friendship differently, and they want to create a relationship that takes these varied needs into account as well.
Therefore, the corporation may provide the service of simply sitting around and doing nothing for certain people, in addition to offering companionship in the form of watching a movie or going for a walk together. All of these conclusions were drawn during the project’s beta phase, which sought to investigate how the elderly connected with the younger members of the Goodfellows in an organic way.
Eplaination : “Like Something A Grandkid Would Do”
According to Live Mint, the business has been able to work with 20 seniors in Mumbai within six months of its start, and depending on how successful it is, it may explore expanding to Pune, Chennai, and Bangalore. According to the creator, the business will progressively expand without compromising the quality of the services it provides. The team will pursue this aim with the utmost seriousness, and Ratan Tata’s contribution has already proven to be a motivating factor.
Goodfellows has chosen young people carefully for the initiative and has employed individuals who demonstrate empathy and emotional intelligence to work as elderly citizens’ companions. These young people would also make sure that the elderly could handle their day without difficulty and, if necessary, would help them with their responsibilities. In essence, Goodfellows offers older folks company “like what a grandkid would do.”
Ratan Tata’s reaction
When the programme first began, Ratan Tata complimented it and said, “Until you spend time by yourself yearning for company, you cannot understand what it is like to be lonely.” He thinks the firm will be able to offer mature companionship, which is hard to come by for the elderly.
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The Goodfellows business strategy is based on a freemium subscription model that offers free services for the first month to let senior citizens become familiar with the idea and subsequently decide to use it if they find it useful. As a result of the constrained affordability of the retirees, a tiny membership charge would be deducted beginning in the second month.
The business has also proposed a future strategy for providing companionship for seniors who put off travel because of worries about a lack of security, company, etc.