Executive chairperson of Antara Senior Care says 'service delivery' has to be the cornerstone of senior care industry
She is not the hardcore business thinker you would meet in the corporate world and is known to be a caring person and has finally made a business out of “care and compassion” in the form of senior care. “I inherently value compassion, empathy, and fundamentally trust human beings. However, the narrative in the work environment has been that you have to be tough and don’t give so much of a rope. But today I fully embrace these values and live my authentic self and organisations with a deep sense of purpose must embrace these values.”
Meet Tara Singh Vachani, Executive Chairperson at Antara Senior Care and Vice Chairperson at Max India, who is building the largest integrated Senior Care ecosystem in India with products covering everything from Senior Living Residences to Assisted Living or Care Homes, Care at home and Age Easy verticals.
Namrata Kohli in an exclusive conversation with Tara Singh
Vachani, Executive Chairperson at Antara Senior Care
How and why did you start with senior care?
I want to be able to say that it was like a
thunderbolt from the sky but it wasn’t. I moved back to India and was wondering
what to do next. At that time, the group was doing multiple new things and
entering new businesses. My father was handling a very executive hands-on role and
told me why don’t you come and be a fly on the wall. At that time, I wasn’t
sure what I wanted and even while growing up, we never had conversations about
this is what I would like to do or parents dictating we would like you to do
this. They just wanted to nurture us in the here and now. So when I joined the
organisation as a fly on the wall intern, I realised that I hated being one because
I wanted to be involved and engaged in something responsible. I travelled
abroad to do audit of a company we were thinking of acquiring and that company
started to talk about senior living and senior care. That just resonated with
me. I am not a business thinker and am a political science and English
literature major. I had a chat with my father that there is something
fascinating about the idea. He being an entrepreneur was always willing to try
new things. He seemed to have the courage to take the risk he literally nudged
me to bring this thing from just being an idea to some sort of a construct. For
two years I just studied the concept in India and the world. And then we just went
ahead with it.
Today there are Care Homes and Care
at Home in the senior care industry. What are the current verticals within the
ambit of senior housing at Antara?
We started with one vertical which is called
Antara Residences, what people call senior living because these are communities
where seniors live. But now the industry and our company are called Senior Care
because we do many more things than just Residences and we have essentially 4
different verticals. We also have Antara care homes, or assisted living for seniors
who need full time care and assistance with daily activities such as food,
medicine management, physiotherapy over short term, mid-term and long term. Our
third vertical is Care At Homes where we provide everything from ICU care to
physiotherapy etc. Last and not the least is Age Easy by Antara where we are
targeting chronic conditions. One of our subjects is knee pain and you will be
surprised to know how many people even in their 50s suffer from knee pain and
we solve the problem with a whole bracket of products such as braces, walking
aids, physiotherapy, nutrition aids.
Today we are the most organised player in India
and have managed to at least change the nomenclature and language from senior
living to senior care industry. Worldwide this industry actually is called
senior care and it encompasses various different products and services. We at
Antara have always wanted to be an integrated platform, with multiple products
and services at different locations, avatars and offerings.
Out of the four verticals that you
enumerated, where is the maximum demand currently in India?
The demand is there for everything related to
seniors. Out of the many ideas pitched to me in senior care industry, I have
not come across a single idea for which there is no demand. The question is
just of the timing of it and price point around it.
I break up demand into what “I want” and what “I
need”. Antara Residences has now become “I want”. When we had launched Antara
Residences, the level of conviction needed was much more. People would say that
they are fine in their homes as they have cleaner, cook coming and because of
social stigma attached to senior living, they were reluctant. Care home model
is where "I need" and the Care home model is directly linked to the moment of
truth when there comes a health episode or a medical crisis and when that
occurs, the necessity kicks in. In a country like ours there is demand for
everything. And in this senior care space which is a fragile vulnerable
ecosystem that has such little products and services to offer there is demand
through and through.
We have so many stories of uncles and aunts who
gave needed products and services to age better. I remember that my mum, when
she was taking care of my grandparents who used to live in Dehradun, and they
used to come and spend time with us for a few weeks. It would be a project to
find the right walker or a wheelchair or a commode chair. We had the luxury and
the privilege to travel abroad so we used to buy from a very fancy shop in
London and then we had to lug it back to India. Today Antara makes all those
things- walkers, walking sticks, wheelchairs, our own beds. That’s how much
things have transitioned and changed because there is that demand and demand in
every category and vertical.
You have come a long way in
redefining the senior living from a compulsion to a choice over the years. But where
is senior care in India versus the global market?
America is a front runner in senior care
industry. They have every type of product and service at every price point. But
we are where America was probably 60 years ago. But we also have a population
that is way larger. We have a long way to go and have a lot of supply to
create. We have to create that supply with far more quality than it is being
created today. The fact that I have been here for 10 years now, and I would get
less offended when people call it an ‘old age home’ and more offended when
people call us real estate, only because real estate also has a reputation of
people building assets, juicing out the financial returns and then leaving. Today
real estate has also redefined itself and people have a lot of respect for good
quality players like what Max Estates is doing. But the fact is that we have to
understand that this is a service led thinking and offering. Being in senior
living under the category of senior care the frontrunner has to be the concept
of service delivery and how am I genuinely contributing to the quality of life
of the person I am serving. How am I enhancing their experience of life and
aging and over the next 10-30 years. Quality has to be redefined with that
lens. We lack supply of all products and services, quality assurance and
quality thinking that needs to be there and finally we don’t have the level of
government advocacy and policy to be able to grow the way we really want
to. Today what is very positive is that the narrative is changing. You can
have a conversation about senior care and senior living without people saying
oh old age home, that I won’t send my parents, that I won’t go there as my
children will take care of me. It’s taken 10 years just personally for me to
see that change but I think that’s a big positive shift.
Buying and renting: Both these
options are not available in the senior housing as yet. What are your thoughts
on opening senior homes for rentals?
When we started Antara Residences, at that time
we found there was no market for rentals. Land cost, infrastructure cost simply
did not make it feasible for rental. In India, people are used to such low
rents that it doesn’t actually commercially work out for an organisation like
ours to do a rental model. The corporate buying that land, building that kind
of infrastructure and cost of our capital being 17-18%- it doesn’t make sense
for us to do a rental model. Also people want to own that asset. But what we
have started seeing that a small shift is happening where there are people who
want to rent and want to come for long term rent. But whether they are willing
to eventually pay what we need to charge them I don’t think they are ready yet.
Out of the 4 verticals that you have
the Residences, the Care homes, the Care at Home and Age Easy where are you
going to work the maximum in the short to medium term?
I have to say it will be equally all three- the
Antara Residences, Care homes and Age Easy. I have a very deep excitement for
all three- Residences, because I know that space and what it takes to do that.
I am sure there will be different challenges in every location but inherently I
understand the consumer and that market very well. The Care home space really
excites me because there are no options. In the Residences space, if you didn’t
have that you could still continue to live in your own home and curate your own
quality of life. There are no alternatives to Care Homes. What happens when
someone has had a stroke or heart issue or dementia with nobody to take care of
them. Their children move back, bag and baggage, and are miserable here. The Care
Homes is a very emotionally led and is a very practical asset lite model
because we don’t go and build that asset from scratch. Age Easy is a completely
new age business. For me, that’s where the learning is happening the most. It’s
a completely tech driven business – our acquisition of business, our sales
happen through technology and yet we are still able to have a deep-rooted
connection with our customer. So, Residences I know and I can feel it and it
feels more intuitive. Care homes there is a deep need and Age Easy is just huge
amounts of learning while Care at home is a completion of service
You use these words such as ‘deep
rooted connection’, ‘intuitive’, ‘emotional’ and these are very women centric. Of
course, there are no stereotypical roles in today’s world but then there are
things that women are inherently better at doing than men. As a woman leader
and operating in this space of care, what do you think you bring extra to the
table?
There was always a trait of mine that earlier I
used to feel a bit awkward about it in the workspace and it was never rewarded.
I valued empathy and giving extra elbow room to people. When things would not
go according to plan, I would put myself in to shoes of the other person. I am
also the kind of person who just gives anyone the benefit of doubt. I think I
inherently trust people. If there is something that just doesn’t happen the way
it should have, I always trust the person who gives reasons that because of xyz
it didn’t happen. However, the narrative in the work environment is that you
have to be tough and you have to demand outcome and don’t give so much of a
rope. Now when I look back, I feel its is one of the most ridiculous feeling. An
organisation with a deep sense of purpose cannot exist if you don’t inherently
have the value of compassion, empathy, of benefit of doubt and fundamentally
trusting in human beings. Today I don’t want to be involved in anything that
does not have a deep sense of purpose and somewhere I wear my approach as a
badge of honour. But as a leader where I felt I was not enjoying what I am
doing, or that I want to do things differently we changed our organisation
structure. Today I am the Executive chairperson and have a very seasoned MD
& CEO and then we have CEOs of our independent business. I now play a very
different role to what I played ten years ago. And in the role that I play, I
fully embrace these values that I hold and I am very grateful that I have the
privilege to do it because not very many women can be their authentic selves in
the workplace.
I find a lot of beautiful artworks
at your home. Is art your true calling? And what do you do in your spare time?
As a family, we have always enjoyed creating
nice spaces. One has had the privilege of being in an ecosystem that is beautiful
and well put together and one just got used to it. That is why in the world of business,
one would hear statements such as ‘Tara you like things only a certain way but that
ends up costing a lot and the customer is not willing to pay.’ For a few years,
I had to second guess but now I just hold onto my belief saying that everybody
wants beauty around them. We just have to figure out how to give it to them at
the price that they can afford it.
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