The venture-capital arm of the tyres to transmissions tower conglomerate, RPG Group has invested $1 million in an online portal for old age-senior-care, Seniority. With this investment RPG Group ventures into senior care e-commerce.

The current investment is part of RPG Group’s strategy to use RPG Ventures to incubate and build new businesses. RPG Ventures is building a portfolio of startups around healthcare, cyber security, medical devices and artificial intelligence. It has invested $1 million each in some of these startups already, reports ETtech.

Commenting on the development, RPG Enterprises Chairman Harsh Goenka said, "Seniority is an innovative concept promoted by RPG Ventures that seeks to address the growing lifestyle needs of the older generation. We are excited by the market and its unique facets. It is a highly discerning and demanding market that requires products that must have immense practical application and ease of use.”

Seniority is created especially for all senior citizens. The Startup is here to help senior people with their specially curated products. Users can browse through their e-commerce platform or even through their chain of retail stores.

Founded by Ayush Agrawal and Tapan Mishra in February 2017, Seniority is competing with other startups like Old is Gold, BeautifulYears, Senior Shelf, and Seniorworld.

Ayush, a young corporate professional,  is an engineer from AIT, Pune and an MBA from IIM Lucknow, and has experience across service, sales, marketing, and strategy. Prior to moving to Seniority Ltd., Ayush was working in Marketing with CEAT Specialty, an RPG group company.

Whereas, Tapan holds Double Masters Degrees - MBA in ‘Strategy & Operations’ from Xavier’s Institute of Mangement (XIMB) and MSc in ‘Accounting & Finance’ from London School of Economics (LSE). He has previously managed the supply chain for an International Commodities trading company, Trafigura Pte Ltd. Prior to moving to Seniority Ltd., Tapan was working as the Head of Operations (e-commerce) for Bioworld Retail (VoxPop Clothing), an International Licensing & Merchandising company, wherein he was managing end-to-end e-commerce operations.

RPG Ventures owns a majority stake in Seniority, while the rest is owned by the two founders – Ayush and Tapan. It may look to raise money from external investors sometime in the second half of the calendar year 2018.

"The market is huge and extremely underserved. The 60-plus demographic is the fastest growing. While people think of India as a young country, it is also rapidly aging. The age group is increasingly Internet savvy and comfortable buying products online," said Ayush Agrawal, Co-founder, Seniority.

Tapan informed that Seniority currently imports most of its 3,000 products, but they are soon planning to start a private label by manufacturing some of this in-house. These products will also be sold on other e-commerce portals such as Amazon and Flipkart. It may also expand its offline presence through stores in hospitals and retirement communities.

The market for senior-care products is growing at a rapid pace. According to Indian government report last year the percentage share of people aged above 60 was 8.6%, or about 10.4 crore people in 2011, up from to 5.6%, or 7.66 crore, elderly people in 2001. Not only this, market research further states that a significant number of seniors today are independent, financially stable, well-travelled, socially connected, and have a fairly good idea of how they want to spend their lives after retirement. And young startups like these are helping them to stay strong and indepent.
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