How This Woman Entrepreneur is Helping You Age Gracefully
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For someone like Vachani, who enjoys being in the service space, Antara Senior Living became a great opportunity in setting hospitality standards, creating a residential community and creating lifecare and
healthcare on the whole. Besides leading Antara, Vachani is also the Director on Max India board.
Almost six years ago when Vachani moved back to India, she chanced upon a conversation with someone who was looking to develop this concept in Asia. That was the first time she really had a touchpoint with this concept and why it was so important to think about.
"When I started to understand what the product was, it was essentially the ability and the opportunity to give people above the age of 55 a lifestyle that's extremely unique and special. And then we started to research this product in various markets in the US," shares Vachani. When Vachani decided to start a new concept on her own under the Max enterprise, it clearly showcased one of her virtues of creating something independently.
Sharing why she moved to India after studies, Vachani says, "It was not a strategic thought to move back to India. Some personal reasons got me back. In those few months, I was searching the direction why I was here. I thought since I am here why don't I start working and understand the Max world.
It was something that always interested me but I didn't know I would do it that soon." Soon Vachani started working with the one who is currently the MD of Max. He was doing some interesting M&A transactions and had some very interesting ideas to develop and grow the Max business. Vachani decided to work with him for a year. It was in that span that the idea of Antara Senior Living came up.
She asked him and other people if she could take some time out and start working on it as a standalone concept.
Antara is being positioned as a real estate enabled senior living residential community as it has three different
service offerings – hospitality, concept of residences and lifecare.
"We are as far away from real estate as it can be," says Vachani. Max, being a listed entity, Vachani had to take the board's approval before starting something new. "For the first year, I did it in my incubator privately, which means it was not officially a part of the publicly listed entity. The first initial capital was from my family.
Interestingly, after one year of researching it, the board of directors said this was very synergistic to other businesses, and for Antara to take good shape, it needed the support and backing of an entity life Max. So Antara became a part of Max India at that stage," reminisces Vachani.
Talking about moving ahead, Vachani says, "Now we will see the operations starting in Dehradun in next six-eight
months. As we have a made a good amount of growth, how we want to grow ahead and where we want to be next, is a big priority for us now."
(This article first appeared in the Indian edition of Entrepreneur magazine (March 2016 Issue).
