How Khyaal Reached 3M Older Adults in India and became the #4 App for Older Adults | The AgeTech Podcast S4E22 with Hemanshu Jain

Keren Etkin: Wow

Hemanshu Jain: and it keeps growing. Yeah, it keeps growing because seniors love what we build. Yeah.

Keren Etkin: Amazing. So offline events, I’m curious about that. ’cause I don’t believe that many direct to consumer startups in our space are doing offline events. How does that look like?

Hemanshu Jain: Well, look, I, I’m a big believer of having both online and offline models involved in any kind of business models. This is also because I’ve worked in, direct to consumer companies before. So I prior to jumping into. Plunging into startups. I have worked in companies like Yahoo.

I’ve worked in a CFC life insurance, which is, a direct to consumer company. And I’ve also worked with a lot of advertising agencies, so I know, how direct to consumer companies work and function. So in that sense, if I have to think through, there’s always, in India, there’s always been a push from offline to online.

So the moment people see you, I. Present everywhere in the offline world, they will be able to associate with you and you have to create like a top of the mind awareness about your brand. So when, today, when I talk to the ministry or when I talk to anybody in India, people already know about kle because we’ve built a brand where people have seen us on the right places.

Of course, we have not gone directly to the children. We have gone directly to the seniors themselves is because, in India when somebody, like, let’s say if I go and tell my dad that, please use this product, he’ll not be happy using it as because, he’s the authoritative figure at home.

So you will not like to be heard from a younger generation. Person. So it’s a very, complex cultural aspect as well. And which is why we go directly to seniors and we do a lot of community building where, you know, when seniors see that. People of their own age are participating in so many events.

Keren Etkin: They automatically would like to associate and they like to, they, they love our patience that we deal with them. And so much of patience that even if they ask the very same question again and again, it gets answered. And this is one thing that they love about us.

It sounds like a lot of effort to, to host these offline events ’cause they don’t scale as easily as an online event would like if you would try to do even an online webinar to provide free education on a topic that you know, that your target audience is interested in.

Keren Etkin: Actually not, in Khyaal, we get a huge amount of participation, even online because they’ve seen things happening offline, they’ve seen things happening online, and there’s also like a hybrid thing that we do during our offline sessions. So during our offline sessions, we teach them that how do you how can you do this every day, from your mobile phone.

Hemanshu Jain: So then it’s like a education, sort of a session for them where they are being educated about Khyaal as to how you can use kale in your everyday life.

Keren Etkin: Fascinating.

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah, so the frequency of these workshops, which are offline, are much less compared to the online one. Online we have about four to five sessions every day.

From Monday to Friday, and we have generally a calendar of events that are planned one month in advance. For offline. We plan our, offline events almost three months in advance. And these are in specific cities, not everywhere, not all cities, because then it becomes very operationally heavy.

So that’s how we do it. Yeah.

Keren Etkin: So what portion of the people who joined Kale joined for the educational parts and what portion joined for the services aspects?

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah. So if I have to explain you the whole funnel, the first layer is the community, then comes the layer of, people who have subscribed to the Khyaal Club and who are a paid member. And then it trickles down from there to. Wanting to travel with the same community of people, the friends, the meaningful connections that you have made.

You would like to travel with them. There are certain people who want to grow their wealth, so they purchase gold on our platform. It’s a digital format of gold. So people who had invested in gold. Starting last year till now, in last one year, they have grown their wealth by 35%. So, in India, especially seniors love to buy gold.

This is another, thing altogether at Khyaal. People also they come to Kal to, find a job for themselves. So there are a lot of these part-time gigs. So we’ve partnered with Wisdom Circle and many other companies so that, this is to solve for the purpose of life for seniors.

Then there are multiple other things that we have on the platform. So, these are things which are created and curated from the perspective of what seniors want. And not only just that, we also have like an e-commerce platform. On the app itself where people buy different products, and these are not products that we manufacture, these are partners who want to distribute their products through Khyaal.

So we, we are like a marketplace model. We know we are very good with community building. We know that we are very good at engaging with seniors and educating them. And we are very good with building the tech. So we are doubling down on our, our strengths and trying to create this whole effect for the entire AgeTech community, which is present here in India.

Keren Etkin: So is your vision to eventually become like the Everything app for seniors in India? Like the Chinese WeChat? Best for older adults in India.

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah, possibly could be. But you know, when we asked seniors, what do you like, what do you think Kal is? They call Kal as a club for seniors, which is why we call it as a Kal Khyaal. Again. And then we, one time we ran a contest for seniors where we said, why don’t you write a jingle? For Kal.

And then, we were blown away to hear that seniors associate Khyaal with their with fun and entertainment and with happiness. With their happiness because they feel very happy after coming to Khyaal. So, then we said, let’s double down on what people like, rather than what we perceive, will work for seniors.

So, yeah, so we do that.

Keren Etkin: Interesting. So if you were to look into the future what would you say are, like your immediate challenges towards fulfilling this vision? And what would you say are like the long term challenges that could arise? Because it sounds like potentially you could in a few years take over the entire market of older adults in India.

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah. Like, I hope so. Fingers crossed. But you know what? What my immediate challenges are is that, there’s nobody who’s built something like this before. So it is very challenging to find right people for this for this particular mission for this company that I’m trying to form.

So the talent that comes to us is, has either worked in a startup or traditional companies, but. Even for them, it’s challenging to sort of understand how Khyaal works and how everything around the community works. So for us the biggest challenge is to. Onboard new team members and then train them in terms of how everything goes around in Kal.

So that’s something that, it’s a constant effort from our side and we keep solving it every day. The second thing is the empathy part. Because for this particular segment, you need that kind of sensibility and sensitivity to deal with the customers. So, with great effort, we have been able to build this team, and I’m proud to say that each and every team member that we have at Khyaal today has a story to tell.

Everybody has one of the, their family members who have gone through this journey, and they have seen it firsthand so they know exactly what they’re trying to solve. So, we try to. We are trying to get all the right people in one place to build for this. So those are certain short term challenges.

The second short term challenge that I see is the, the whole the funding scenario which is happening here in India. This. This is a new category in itself for India, and the Indian VCs has not seen any mini meaningful business models evolve yet. They’ve seen some of these business models in us, but, the US market is completely different.

It’s a more B2B market, more driven through Medicare and, insurance companies and whatnot. But in India it’s not like that. In India, it’s a direct to consumer market. Insurance companies, do not pay for something like this. We are working closely with the government to figure out, various policies for senior citizens, even the insurance factor for seniors.

So there’s so much to build. So what excites me is the long-term vision, because it’s like a complete whiteboard. We have so many things to solve for. I’m excited for that vision and of course, while you are solving for a larger vision, you will have these smaller hurdles in between and which we are solving for.

So, my long-term vision is that, we would love to keep building many things for seniors in because it’s a completely white space. There are many things to be built for this segment.

Keren Etkin: So how does ai integrate into your vision. Will it be possible for a user a year from now or five years from now to just say, Hey, Al today I wanna play chess with my friends. I need a taxi to get to the pharmacy. And later, it would be great if you could order some groceries for me.

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah, so even today at al we do have AI integrated. It’s not that we don’t have ai, but what AI does today on Khyaal is that we have a concierge, AI based concierge for seniors wherein you can, log onto the app. Request us to book a ticket for you if you want to go for a movie or if you want to travel, or if you want to, help you with certain things.

So it’s very similar to an Amex kind of an experience, but there is also a human layer involved. So the first part is where the AI is gonna chat with you and try and understand your requirement. This is, again, to reduce our burden of. Interacting with a customer, but then as soon as the AI is able to understand our customer’s need, then a human. our team member will come in and try to solve it and book the whole thing for the senior. So this is the first touch point from an AI perspective. The second is that there is something called asthe AI nostalgia bit that we have created on Kal. There’s a. Entertainment and fun, kind of a section on Khyaal where seniors today go and revive their old black and white photos.

This is again from the perspective of, the whole dementia and Alzheimer’s thing that, you know, when this part of the reminiscence therapy where you go back into your memories. And try to revive them. So seniors love to remove their old photographs, which are black and white.

And they use our app to convert those into colored photos. And then there are also sessions where they come and talk about these photos to their friends in the community. So then they’re also building on new stories. ’cause what happens is that with seniors, when they are around people the same, when they’re around the same people.

So for example, if. I go to my dad. My dad is from IT Bombay. He keeps telling me the same story again and again. So what happens is that, I may be bored of hearing the same story again and again, but if you have a new story, it is going to become much more exciting for you. So it teach seniors how to, go back to your memories.

Get these new stories and talk to people. So again, strike new conversations with people, become an interesting person because, loneliness is not a one-sided problem. It’s a two-sided problem. Seniors are being ignored because they have the same things to talk about. So we educate them.

How do become much more interesting for, people around your society as well? So it becomes a new factor for them. We’ve created a lot of excitement for them. So we also have a I’ll show it to you. In fact, we have a Khyaal Card. This is a NFC card, that we give to every Khyaal member.

Now what happens is that if you tap this card on the phone, you can exchange your information, like your phone number, your email address things like, your interests. Your blood group if you are in a case of an emergency. So seniors love to go around and tap this on other people’s phone because they’re like, this is a new new thing for them.

So it’s a new obsession for seniors. So try to create these new, excitement for seniors.

Keren Etkin: I love that. I love, and I love that you always mix the physical world with the virtual world because it’s very easy as someone building a software to just build it in a way that is addictive and just lets, your users just immerse themselves in the software and not letting them do anything in the real world at all because you have no control over what happens there.

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah. Yeah,

Keren Etkin: so,

Hemanshu Jain: That was actually my last question is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you would like to talk about or you would, that you would like to add to anyone listening or watching this podcast?

Well, anybody who’s listening to this podcast, I would like to say that, please spend more time with your family because I know we are living in a digital world, and of course we interact with, the digital world so much that we forget that we also have humans living with us. So, spend as much time as possible, with your parents people who are around you.

And I think this is going to be a problem as we grow more digitally savvy, people are gonna lose human conversations. So yeah, just that and, keep solving is what I say always to people. Yeah.

Keren Etkin: Absolutely. And if you are bright Indians looking for a job, maybe Khyaal has open positions for you. ’cause it sounds

Hemanshu Jain: Yeah, absolutely. We would love to, talk to you and yeah, get you on Khyaal.

Keren Etkin: Awesome. Heman, thank you so much for joining me in the show today. It was an absolute pleasure chatting with you and learning more about Khyaal.

Hemanshu Jain: Likewise, Keren. I’ve always been, such a nice, interesting person to talk with. I remember our conversation when I was in the US although we did not spend enough time and I love your podcast. I always recommend it to people in India. So. Yeah, keep doing more of this.

Keren Etkin: Thank you. Thank you so much.