E-commerce Startup Seniority is an exclusive online store for seniors to meet with a wide range of elderly care products of senior community

Seniority, a Pune-based startup, is an amalgamation of Tapan Mishra and Ayush Agrawal’s entrepreneurship ideas. It all started from the concern on the mushrooming ecommerce of the country not paying adequate attention to the screaming needs of the senior citizens. 

While our country tops the list of housing the youngest population and witnesses increasing number of solutions for the Gen Z issues, unfortunately none seems to bat an eye to the issues that the aged people struggle with. 

But surprisingly, the ‘Young India’ is ageing way faster than anticipated. Within 50 years from now, the number of senior citizens is expected to touch a headcount of over 34 crore.

That is exactly what Tapan and Ayush decided to do their bit for. Thus, the duo came up with a shopping platform dedicated to the needs of senior citizens in 2017. Seniority solely aims to provide a hassle free remedy to its customers through its website as well as offline retail stores spread across Coimbatore, Bhiwadi, Chennai and Pune. Within its 3 years long journey it has already curated product portfolio of more than 6,000 products aligned with the medical, kitchen, wellness, leisure and lifestyle needs.

Seeding Of the Idea behind Seniority

The birth of the idea ages back to 3 years. It first hit Ayush while he was acting as a managing force to the marketing efforts of CEAT, a part of the Mumbai-based RPG Group. 

The RPG Group decided to work towards the idea and invested $6 million in the startup. 

India currently holds 120 million senior populations together, who are increasingly adopting technology, and being comfortable with online purchasing of self-care products under various categories.

Thus, to make sure they find a remedy against all their possible problems, Seniority stocked up on a gamut of products- bathroom and mobility aids, music and personal care items massagers and pain relief products to books to name a few.

Estimating the Underestimated Customer Base

Narrowing down on the idea, Ayush concentrated on setting up team Seniority. It didn’t take long for him to include Tapan in his team, as he held extensive experience in the domain from his post of an operational head for the clothing line VoxPop.

Seniority is currently having a team of over 170. Tapan explains how the experiment during the first three months eventually took the shape of today’s business proposition. The startup gradually shifted its focus from factors like onboarding vendors, gluing a together a motivated team and meeting industry leaders to earn enrichment from their view still all deals were sealed as they expected it to or better.

The degree or lack of awareness in a category like senior care posed major challenge to the startup initially which has not completely bid an adieu yet, Ayush notes, as there is hardly any ecommerce site on the same page addressing their lifestyle needs.

Another challenge was channelizing the brand’s message across. 

Up the ladder

Even though Seniority targets to reach out to senior citizens and receives a lion share of interest from them on both online and offline, younger caregivers mostly aging between 25 and 40 years have been showing equal interest alongside, too.

The first Seniority store was opened in Coimbatore, in association with CovaiCare, a senior care oriented brand. Now, Seniority has seven offline stores spread across selected cities. 

The founder happily narrates the story of achieving 15 percent month-on-month growth in revenue.

Goodness of Ecommerce 

Flipkart and Amazon might be the e-commerce biggest trying hard to stop Indian online shopper’s attention from slipping off them, niche ecommerce players are leaving no stones unturned to catch up, too. Seniority is matching steps accordingly, and expects to touch 1.4 million people by a timeline of 20 years.

Plans for the years ahead

While brightening the present, Seniority plans for the future simultaneously.

Calling the existing 3 lakh customers a drop in the ocean, the team looks forward to investment in sectors like customer acquisition, tech platform, customer service, and to ensure constant supply of innovative products to the potential customers.

Seniority is all excited about launching their private brand label soon along with launching an app for its customers.