India's elder care company TribecaCare expands beyond Kolkata

"We started working in Kolkata 18 months ago. The response is encouraging here and as we evolve and focus on firming up our logistics, we are also eyeing other cities of India like New Delhi, the National Capital Region and also other metros," said Tamojit Dutta, one of the managing directors of TribecaCare.

Tribeca Care provides Medical, Non-Medical & Emergency services - making it a unique“one-stop” Elder Care service provider.

"Our is a sandwich generation where young to middle aged professional are caught between their responsibilities towards there parents and children. For career opportunities they are spread all over the world while constantly worrying for their parents back home. We are here to come to their rescue by providing holistic elder care offering both medical and non medical needs of the senior citizens," said Dutta.

Tribeca Care Managers work with families and top healthcare providers to bring value added Home Care to older, chronic patients. Significant investments are also being made to develop trained care workers and a robust tech-enabled back-end to handle increasing care requests.

According to  Dutta,  “In the US, Long Term Support Services (LTSS) is a $400 bn industry that benefitted from enormous public and private investments over many years. With 110 million Senior Citizens, India has the 2nd largest aged population in the world. However, managing Elder Care in India is a major challenge for most busy, nuclear families.Lack of professional care infrastructure makes Elder Care both stressful and difficult to manage – especially at home. We, at TribecaCare,are endeavoring to make it easier for adult children, who sometimes live in another city or even country, to manage day-to-day care of their older loved ones.”

"While our model is still evolving, we are a one stop place for everything. From medical and non medical needs to emergency responses and even institutional care like old age homes, we are offering all services," said Dutta.

Dutta said they are doing thorough background check of their care managers besides taking the help of police for verification of the care manager antecedents.

"Challenge is to get trained ayas and nurses," he said.

"We are also arranging third party products and services like Oxygen Concentrators , wheel chairs, etc.," he said.

Dutta said they are also agnostic to the doctor or hospital their clients choose and hence they act according to the wishes of the care receiver. 
 
While in this new market, there are a few other companies like Portea and Dabur group's Health Care at Home India, TribecaCare says it is trying to make the entire services as affordable as possible for people.

"We charge between Rs 650 and Rs 7000 a month now. But we are even starting a service for Rs 100 a month. We have already registered around 7500 bed side visits in a month since starting our services," said Prateep Sen, another managing director of the company.

Home Care requires management of multiple service providers – nurses, doctors, physiotherapists, pharmacies - few of whom communicate with each other. Every Tribeca member gets a personal Care Manager who coordinates services on behalf of the family.

Tribeca’s services include, but are not limited to: 24/7 Emergency response, scheduled doctor home calls, home nursing, physiotherapist support, medical device rental, snoring solutions and FREE medicine home delivery. TribecaCare has partnered with leading healthcare providers – hospitals, doctors, diagnostic clinics, dieticians and medical device manufacturers – to bring holistic and affordable Elder Care for many.

Started in late-2013 by a group of non-resident Indians (NRIs), Tribeca Care (www.tribecacare.com) Management Team comprises Tamojit Dutta, Prateep Sen, Elina Dutta, Dr Shibaji Saha and Ritendra Roy.

"We are currently in talks with venture capitalists for investment in the venture, " said Dutta.

"It is a private limited company. We have a vision to make it one of the biggest elder care companies in India," he said.

Photo:  TribecaCare managing director Tamajit Dutta in their south Kolkata office
 
(Reporting by Sujoy Dhar, Images by AvishekMitra)