Antara Senior Care has announced three major launches across Bengaluru and Gurugram. Could you walk us through the vision behind these new formats? How do they align with your long-term vision for transforming senior care in India?
Our vision is to create an integrated care ecosystem for seniors. Their needs are diverse and vary with age and medical condition. In the 60s, there is a need for social connectedness, wellness, pursuing passions which had been put on the back burner. In 70s proactive management of chronic diseases, frailty, nutrition and emotional wellbeing become essential. Post that, health span, succession, estate management take priority. Antara aspires to provide care that grows as the senior’s needs evolve. Our Infrastructure build outs are aligned with these unique needs.
At Antara, we have seen pre-retirement executives enter our ecosystem at 55 as part of senior living community, living their aspirational best life with all the dedicated amenities. Backed by on-campus concierge services, club, housekeeping, golfing greens, and primary and preventive healthcare, they double down on reinventing themselves personally and professionally, supplementing evolving needs with mobility aids and solutions as needed. Cyclically, post-acute care or age may demand Care at Home support or Care Homes services. Finally, life care suites on campus and community support help older couples cope with defining changes. The ecosystem ensures that elders and their loved ones are cared for at every stage.
India is entering a moment of demographic transformation — nearly 19,500 Indians turn 60 every day, and our senior population is projected to reach 347 million by 2050. To us this a call to reimagine how India ages. We believe that growth must be anchored not just in infrastructure, but in the belief that ageing can be aspirational, enriching, connected and dignified. Our recent expansions in Gurugram and Bengaluru reflect this philosophy.
In Gurugram, Estate 361 brings to life intergenerational living — senior-specific design and dedicated spaces surrounded by vibrance of youth. We have two senior living towers with 360 units built for independence: step-free layouts, wheelchair friendly, anti-skid flooring, grab rails, gyms and pools designed for seniors, emergency response systems, medical rooms with on-campus doctors, nurses and paramedics; every space designed to maximise ease, joy, safety allowing seniors to live independently for as long as possible.
This format also enables families to stay close without creating dependence, fosters emotional wellbeing through shared spaces and social exchange, and embodies dignified ageing — where care does not replace autonomy and enhances freedom. Gurugram and like cities, with their large population of working professionals, are ideal for this concept.
Care Homes, on the other hand, cater to a different target segment. This is apt for seniors who live alone, need immersive care that can’t provide at home and also need help with activities of daily life because of ageing or acute illnesses or interventions. Antara Care Homes are designed like homes with individual rooms / suites for rent (long-term and short-term) with community spaces for activities, backed by physiotherapy room, and have terraces and gardens. They are built to offer, structured 24×7 care, rehab if needed, nutritionally planned meals, daily health checks by doctors and psychologists (to catch dementia early), and fun games to promote group interaction and boost mental health. All staff are geriatric trained and know when to help and when to just be there.
While we have a Care Homes network in NCR with ~200 beds, the concept is more prevalent in the south, like Bengaluru. The city hosts over one million tech professionals, many of them migrants, attracts returning NRIs seeking culturally familiar yet globally competitive ageing environments, and retains far more residents in the city than it loses to migration. Here seniors live longer and differently. We currently operate two Care Homes in Bengaluru with ~160 beds for assisted living, post-hospitalisation recovery and respite stays, supported by insurance and AI-enabled monitoring. We have Care Homes in Chennai (~120 beds), and we aspire to launch senior residences in both these cities thus completing our integrated care ecosystem for seniors.
But between independence and immersive care lies a window to maintain functional ability and intervene proactively to prevent sudden decline. The proposed Antara Integrated Wellness Centre (AIWC) is aimed at meeting this need through a combination of modern medicine, diagnostics and the wisdom of holistic healing offered by therapies, including Ayurveda. Consider balance loss in seniors, often dismissed as “normal aging”, would be addressed comprehensively at AIWC. Our approach would combine gait assessment, eye exam, Panchakarma, targeted nutrition, and yoga into one coordinated plan. As vision and hearing loss are known to accelerate cognitive decline, the treatment plan would add cognitive stimulation to protect brain health, and sensory optimisation. Early detection and holistic management could buy time to intervene before functional loss becomes irreversible.
Together, these launches, executed and planned, move us closer to Antara’s long-term vision, a continuum of care. where a senior can transition from independent living to assisted recovery to long-term support without ever losing their community, identity or sense of belonging.
India’s ageing population is growing rapidly. What new care models or innovations do you believe will be essential to meet the evolving medical, emotional, and social needs of seniors over the next decade?
The number of super seniors (80+) in India is set to rise by 270 per cent+ by 2050; ~75 per cent suffer from chronic conditions – a burden likely to increase as lifespan increases. By 2046, seniors will outnumber children. We already face shortage of caregivers and geriatricians, even in core healthcare delivery,– with India producing only ~80 geriatricians a year. In this context, maintaining good health in old age would be crucial for Indians.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines healthy aging as maintaining functional ability, a combination of intrinsic capacity (physical health) and environment (what enables you). For healthy ageing, medical care, good social environment and built-up infrastructure are equally important. India currently addresses these needs separately—at hospital OR home OR institution. Each transition disrupts sense of community, wellbeing, identity, routine, belonging. What India needs to age well are Continuous Care Retirement Communities (CCRC).
Antara is among the few players pioneering CCRCs in India, and we have built ours around seven pillars of wellness: physical, social, emotional, intellectual, occupational, spiritual and environmental. Each of these combine to meet the unique needs of seniors.
However to enable India to age well, the CCRC concept will have to perhaps be adapted for community-level implementation. We can refer to this as C.A.C.H.E. or Community-Anchored Care Ecosystems.
To ensure we can care for our elderly, who will soon be 20 per cent of our society, and increasing old-age dependency ratio, we will have to reimagine Primary Health Centres so that they can handle ageing related challenges. We will need neighborhood-level care hubs serving catchment populations of 50,000-100,000. Each hub can offer adult day centre for social engagement, caregiver training, and telehealth access. From this hub tiered home care spokes can radiate: tech-enabled monitoring for independent seniors, part-time trained caregivers for moderate needs, 24×7 skilled care for complex cases. To this, we may need to add small community care homes for when home care becomes insufficient, like for dementia or post-stroke rehab. We would need to look at ‘resident engagement teams’ powered by neighbours or volunteers or social workers to take care of emotional and social needs of ageing seniors.
How can integrated wellness models, combining preventive care, chronic disease management, and holistic wellbeing, reshape the future of ageing in India?
The biggest challenge in senior healthcare today is fragmentation. A senior citizen with diabetes, hypertension, early Parkinson’s, and declining hearing sees four different specialists, who may not always coordinate therapeutic interventions with each other. The result is polypharmacy, repeated hospitalisation, chronic pain, and functional impairments. Crucially, no one is looking at the person holistically or asking, “what should be the top priority for the senior citizen to improve the functional quality of life”.
Integrated wellness addresses this, but it’s not just combining modern and traditional medicine. It’s recognising that humans are multi-layered beings requiring personalised interventions. At Antara, we are now structuring our approach around the Panchkosha framework. True healing occurs when balance is restored across all five layers. Our proposed AIWC structures therapeutic care around this framework.
Let’s once again take the example of a senior with balance loss. With the integrated approach, doctors specialising in integrated medicine address multiple koshas simultaneously. At Annamaya or physical body level, they conduct gait assessment, eye exams, strength training, and Panchakarma for joint health. At the Manomaya or mind-emotion level, they address the fear of falling through mindfulness and sleep optimisation. We further recommend community walking groups or purposeful outdoor activities. This is treating root causes across interconnected layers, not isolated symptoms.
As India’s elderly population grows, healthcare expenditure is set to rise dramatically. Integrative medicine offers a sustainable alternative by preventing chronic disease onset / progression, reducing hospital admissions and lowering medication burden. Additionally, integrative healthcare aligns well with India’s existing cultural familiarity, making adoption easier. This Panchkosha-based model may be able to help us create a replicable model for geriatric integrative care that others in India can adopt.
As senior care evolves beyond traditional models, what role do you see technology and digital health solutions playing in improving access, safety, and overall quality of life for older adults?
I’m both excited and cautious about technology in senior care. Let me start with where technology genuinely transforms care. Remote monitoring and early warning systems are game changers: Fall detection sensors that alert caregivers immediately; wearables tracking vitals and detecting anomalies before they become emergencies; medication dispensers that prevent the dangerous confusion of polypharmacy. These aren’t futuristic – they exist, they work, and they extend the window of safe independent living significantly.
Telemedicine has been transformative, especially post-pandemic. But here’s the nuance, telemedicine works for monitoring and consultation; it cannot replace physical assessment.
Then there are products which help in ageing with ease and comfort, this is where businesses like AGEasy come in. The insight came to us from seniors struggling for solutions to chronic conditions that don’t require hospitalisation or immersive care. For example, a senior with knee osteoarthritis needs a suitable knee brace with anti-inflammatory supplements that don’t damage the gut and a set of exercises which strengthen the leg muscles. If all these were embraced, then the senior may be able to manage the knee condition for some time till surgery becomes inevitable. We realised something important: environment isn’t just buildings and communities; it’s also the products and solutions offered on websites.
The most promising aspect is integration of technology into care ecosystems rather than standalone solutions. Imagine this: A senior living in our intergenerational community has passive monitoring sensors at home. Data flows to the wellness centre where their care team monitors trends. An unusual pattern – reduced movement, changed sleep – triggers a check-in call, then a home visit if needed. The family receives updates through an app. If an emergency occurs, the nearest care home is alerted with full medical history already available.
The demographic reality is unforgiving. We won’t have enough trained caregivers. We won’t have enough geriatricians. Technology must fill that gap – but thoughtfully, culturally appropriately, and always in service of human connection, not replacing it.