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Some students from India came up with a way to liven up the sometimes dull lives of seniors. They connect homes for the elderly with orphanages to plan social activities.

That can raise the spirits of residents by making them like part-time grandparents, according to Ananya Grover, who was a Tech Witches participant at this year’s Technovation World Pitch event — a night of networking and connecting to support young women (ages 10-18) from around the world aspiring to change the world through tech. Each team at the event previews their business proposal and pitches their app.

Tech Witches showcased its app, called Maitri, at the event. Grover was inspired to create the app after the loss of two of her elderly relatives — her grandmother and her grandfather in the space one year. 

“I lost my grandmother to cancer. After she past away, my grandfather sort of felt really lonely and that he had lost all purpose in life,” Grover said. “I could see first hand the effects that loneliness could have on someone’s mental and social well being. And that led to health problems that he never, ever had before.”

Grover and teammates Anushka Sharma, Arefa Muzaffar, Vanshika Yadav, and Vasudha Sudhinder spoke with Sonia Tagare, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Technovation World Pitch event in Santa Clara, California. They discussed India’s elderly and how the team developed skills to build the app (see the full interview with transcript here). 

Grandchildren for a day

India has 103.9 million elderly individuals, and 39%  have been abandoned by their families, according to Maitri’s page on Google Play. App users can log in and look up local homes for the elderly. They can find out how to donate necessities like food, blankets and the like.

As it happens, India also has about 30 million orphaned children, according to the team. This situation sparked an idea in teammate Sudhinder, who suggested that they bring the two groups together.

“In India, especially, we have a very strong familial bond between children and grandparents,” Grover said. Sadly, orphaned children generally miss out on this experience. Maitri brings orphans into elderly homes for activities like music, poetry and drawing. They enrich both groups with a family-like experience they might otherwise miss out on.

The app has been downloaded over 1,000 times so far. The team hopes to expand it beyond Delhi into additional regions of India.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Technovation World Pitch event:

Photo: SiliconANGLE