When living zip codes, countries or continents away from aging parents many of us constantly have a level of anxiety in how they are doing. Even if they are healthy and living independently, I believe the physical distance apart introduces some level of concern on well being.
In building Sahaaya, one of our key objectives is to help reduce the level of anxiety and ultimately improve peace of mind for all involved. This is clearly a lofty goal and will take a combination of better understanding our users situations, innovative technology and focused execution.
To get started, we have formed a few hypotheses on what elements we believe can increase peace of mind for our users. Subsequently, we are launching solutions around key elements that we believe all our users may benefit from:
- Wellness: health and wellness are broad areas and no one company can do it all. There are certified experts in healthcare and there are self-care techniques that can help us maintain a good quality of life. At Sahaaya, we are both building technical solutions to simplify self-care and assistance while providing options to get access to local healthcare experts.
- Home-care: as we all know, our homes require constant up-keep to ensure a safe, clean and relaxing environment for us. As our parents age, they may not be able to look after their home by themselves. Thus, we are looking for ways to streamline the process and provide options to simplify this activity.
- Food: as I experienced in the case of my parents, there are occasionally times when they may be incapacitated and unable to get required nutritious food easily. Sahaaya can provide our users with the ability to find and order food be it for dinner tonight, a month-long home delivery or in-home catering from anywhere in the world.
- Money: as our parents age, there will inevitably be unplanned healthcare and other needs that will require additional funds. Sahaaya provides our users options to address an urgent incident or plan ahead for long-term care via insurance, money transfers and other means.
Over time, these categories will get smarter, expand and get deeper to provide even more solutions that will our users increase their peace of mind.