As part of our regular calls to confirm well being/ any needs, our executive Sanjay was visiting Mr Bhatiker at Dahiser. He was informed by Mr Bhatiker that they were very concerned for his sister, who is 85 years old and had been displaying old age symptoms like erratic behaviour/ weakness/ depression.

They were not sure how they should tackle this, and had no idea who to speak to for help with such things. Sanjay suggested that they should look at patient care assistance at home, someone with some training in handling such things could come and stay with her all day daily, helping in alleviating the load on other family members.

Mr Bhatiker was quite interested in knowing how this works, and Eldess was able to help him in meeting a few such caregivers through agencies. He interviewed some of them, and based on more comfort took a decision to hire one of the ladies interviewed to provide such care to his sister.

Eldess facilitated the whole process, from getting them to think of this as a problem with a common solution, (rather than something that you just manage somehow) to finding them such a person.

Sanjay is the support executive of the Eldess as Friendly Relative service, which provides services to solve problems of senior citizens members, on a subscription basis. This service works in a way very similar to how a friendly relative would solve the problem, if he had enough time. The difference of course, is that Eldess focuses on this field, and has some experience through handling various problems of its customers.

As part of our regular calls to confirm well being/ any needs, we were informed by Geeta Chandrashekar that they have had a plumbing problem (slow flow of water in toilet flush) for at least 2-3 months. They had tried to repair it themselves, and then after several calls (plumbers in Mumbai need to be called several times as all of us know!), a plumber came but he just serviced it, took his payment Rs 200, but did not solve the problem. Total waste of time and money without a solution in any case, and especially troublesome for senior citizens.

The Eldess support executive took over at this point. He found a good local plumber, took him to the house and showed the problem, and the plumber was able to explain what was causing the problem (pipes get blocked over time), and then solved it by replacing/ bypassing the blocked pipe.

In this entire process, our executive took complete responsibility while solving the problem, including staying and supervising the plumber all of the time while he did the work. Our senior citizens got the problem solved, and did not even have to stand and supervise (of course, the problem was explained and the plumber payment had to be done by them).

Just another day’s work for Kapil, who is the support executive of the Eldess as Friendly Relative service, which provides services to solve such day to day problems of senior citizens members, on a subscription basis. This service works in a way very similar to how a friendly relative would solve the problem, if he had enough time.

Eldess is also in the process of tying up with a service provider who employs its own plumbers/ electricians and other repairmen, and therefore is able to provide quality repair work on a reliable basis to its customers across Mumbai.