The $3.5 Mn funding round also saw participation from the family office of Jagran Group, Climber Capital, Kunal Shah, Suhail Sameer, among others
GenWise will use the funding for hiring and facilitating the full-scale rollout of its platform
Founded in 2023, GenWise caters to elderly population, allowing them to access a gamut of features such as digital literacy, financial management and social engagement
Elderly-focused lifestyle platform GenWise has raised $3.5 Mn in a seed funding round led by Matrix Partners India.
The funding round also saw participation from investors such as DBR Ventures (the family office of Jagran Group) and Climber Capital. Angel investors such as CRED’s Kunal Shah, former BharatPe CEO Suhail Sameer, and LiquiLoans cofounder Achal Mittal also participated in the round.
The startup will use the funding to hire and establish its initial team. The investment will also be deployed to facilitate the full-scale rollout of its app, which is currently only available for Android users.
At the outset, the app will be an invite-only platform for users. In a statement, the startup said that the platform will be rolled out to a larger audience and additional features will be added as the app gains traction among users.
“GenWise embodies our collective vision to develop a lifestyle app that not only empowers the elderly but also bridges the prevailing digital gap between generations, that we witnessed within our own families. We strongly believe that age should not be a barrier for anyone to leverage the potential of going digital and its various possibilities,” GenWise cofounder Rajat Jain said.
Genwise was founded in 2023 by former senior executives of fintech unicorn BharatPe – Vijay Aggarwal (chief technology officer), Rajat Jain (chief product officer of lending and consumer products), Geetanshu Singla (vice-president of technology), and Nehul Malhotra (PostPe head).
It offers a community platform catering specifically to elderly population, allowing them to access a gamut of features such as digital literacy, financial management, wellness and social engagement.
GenWise’s artificial intelligence-powered app offers an online personal assistant that assists elders in daily tasks such as online payments, online shopping and bookings. Apart from medicine reminders, the app also allows users to view their account balance and transact online.
The startup aims to roll out features such as an embedded social media platform on the app to enable elders to socialise online. Besides, it also plans to launch financial products such as investments and payments accounts on its app in the future.
The startup is targeting individuals above the age of 50, who, as per cofounder Malhotra, possess, on an average, 10X the accumulated wealth compared to those under the age of 35. He believes that the age group of 50-75 is the fastest growing demographic in the country and, as such, necessitates the need of an enabler to simplify the use of technology.
The funding round comes months after the platform released a beta version of its product.
The elderly-focussed consumer internet app market is still in its infancy stage. The space has been plagued by issues such as digital literacy and verbosity of technology which makes it difficult for users in the 50-75 demographic to adopt newer technologies.
Besides, the space continues to remain an untapped market especially for app developers. However, a clutch of startups such as senior-care ecommerce platform Seniority and elderly-focused app Empowerji have come up with products to bridge the gap.
With the demographic expected to grow manifold in the coming years, the space could see further traction going forward.
