Aaji Care-at-Home services, creating care at home solutions and employment for low-income women

Aaji Care at Home Services provide professional services in the non-medical/personal care space for families which need care for patients, seniors and kids. At the same time, they train and employ low-income women to work as Care Assistants. Founder, Prasad Bhide, talks about the challenges of professionalising the care-at-home sector in India

What is the core value proposition of your business? 

Aaji Care at Home aims to professionalise a highly unorganised, neglected sector in Indian healthcare to provide personal, non-medical care for families with patients who need looking after at home. At the same time, we provide dignified career options for less educated, low income women who we train to be Care Assistants. The women we train have either never worked before or have been working as daily wage labourers with no employee benefits or insurance. We are providing these women with the opportunity to become professionals with a decent income and proper employee benefits. We work with local NGOs and Self help groups to source our Care Assistants.

How is your business different to what already exists in the market?

There are a number of training institutes that are training people to work in hospitals but none that train people to provide vital non medical care at home. This is the gap in the sector that we are trying to address by also providing a viable career option for less educated women. We want to develop courses to train women to provide care to patients at home particularly those with terminal illnesses such as Alzheimers, dementia etc. The demand for such services is very high in India as nuclear families become more common and fewer people are actually living with their elderly relatives.
The training process has been key. Initially, people were surprised that we were providing training for free. But these women don’t have money to pay and I needed to motivate people to come into this field. It is not just one-off training but we have follow-up sessions with the Care Assistants based on the feedback received from clients and Care Managers.

What feedback have you received from clients and the women that you have employed?

It has been fantastic. We always have three or four clients on our waiting list. We currently don’t have the capacity to deal with the demand, and we are trying to collaborate with other training institutes to train additional Care Assistants.
As for the women we train and employ, they have provided really heartening feedback. Some of these women had never stepped out alone before, and now they have a job, their own bank account and mobile phone. It has given them the independence and confidence that was lacking before. A number of women have also said that now that they have learnt how to properly take care of children and elderly people, how to ensure that everything is hygienic and other similar training, they do the same in their own households.

What would you say is the most challenging aspect of starting and running your inclusive business?

The key difficulty has been to get women involved. This is a service that has traditionally been done by maids and so it has been looked down upon, even by poor people. It has been challenging to convince people that this is a dignified, respectable profession. For the first six to eight months we had a tough time convincing people about this. We have tried to professionalise the job as much as possible and this has helped change perceptions. We provide women with proper uniforms, do proper verification checks and send a Care Manager with the assistants when they visit a house for the first time among other things.

What is the one factor that has most enabled your inclusive business to progress this far?

We got into this at the right time. Mumbai has a population of 1.8 Crore people and the market size in this sector is Rs.2000 Crore. This sector is currently very unorganised. Other companies have provided people without training, no background verifications etc. We provide the training, do the due diligence and have quality checks in place that other companies aren’t doing. There is a huge need for a good service and people are willing to pay. The market is ready for our quality, affordable service.

As a Sankalp finalist, many doors will open to funding & partnering opportunities and exchange of knowledge with others. How critical are these to the success of your business?

Collaboration is the most critical for me. Unless we collaborate with other players in the healthcare sector, I don’t think we can succeed. We already have some partners within the sector. And Sankalp has given us access to potential partners and investors. I’m already talking to organisations who have been previous Sankalp Finalists.

Where do you see your business five years from now?

I want Aaji Care to be a leader in the Care-at-Home sector. We want to be a pioneer in this sector and expand to other cities in India.

What is the one piece of advice you would give to entrepreneurs looking to start an inclusive business?

I don’t think I am really qualified for it but my two cents is that at the end of the day, regardless of your social objective you HAVE to make sure your business is sustainable. One always starts from the social angle that one gets emotional about but we have to understand that to make the right social impact, we have to be financially sustainable as well. It is critical to make sure the business model is viable and that financial due diligence is done thoroughly.