Real estate mogul Niranjan Hiranandani, of the Hiranandani Group, and YourStory’s founder and Shradha Sharma on Thursday invested an undisclosed sum of seed funding in Goodfellows, a senior companionship startup.
With the fundraise, the Ratan Tata-backed startup plans to strengthen its operations in Mumbai, expand services to new cities like Pune, Kolkata and Bengaluru and employ methods to address queries on the platform, according to a press statement.
The investors, Hiranandani and Sharma, will be onboarded to the startup’s advisory board.
“Goodfellows has understood the problem, looked for a solution and worked out a concept around it. This is what makes it wonderful and unique. It is a concept needed in today’s world,” said Hiranandani, the managing director and co-founder of the Hiranandani Group.
Launched in September 2022 with a token investment from Tata Sons' chairman emeritus, Ratan Tata, Goodfellows was founded by entrepreneur Shantanu Naidu, which was bootstrapped in December 2021.
The Mumbai-based platform providing companionship to the elderly in their day-to-day activities was expected to kick off full-blown operations early this year. It launched a beta version of its platform late last year and onboarded about 20-25 subscribers with 15 employees as of December 2021.
Naidu had said that the venture looks to grow slowly by vetting the ‘Goodfellows’ based on their emotional intelligence. The founder said the platform is not expected to be tech-heavy, and may focus more on personal interaction, considering its target audience.
Goodfellows is one of the first such startups in the senior care assisted services segment in India focused on senior companionship, while other players predominantly include non-profit firms and senior care players such Antara Senior Care, or Pune-based retailer Seniority, which offers health and lifestyle products for senior citizens.
