McKinsey consultant Ivan Osadchiy once took a trip to New York – at the same time as his seventy-year-old father went into hospital in Moscow. “I couldn’t help my dad to keep in touch with the family, or give him any support”, Ivan recalls.
Osadchiy’s father had no way of reaching him either by Skype or on social networks – it’s not easy for an old man to wrestle with the set-up for Skype or Facebook. So it was at that time that Ivan had the idea to create a service that would simplify internet access for people of his father’s age.
In 2011 Ivan got down to work on the project. One of his colleagues at McKinsey, Mykola Komarevskyy helped him to get it off the ground. Ivan handled the design of the project (user experience design and product design), while Mykola managed the technical side (end-to-end implementation). Third-party developers wrote the code for the start-up. The first public version of the EasyFamily AppSuite application appeared three months later – offering simplified access to the internet, social networks, photo-sharing services and Skype. On Facebook the application offers access to five main functions (news, photos, contacts, messages and games). “The big aspect is setting up the security features. Entry-level users have the ability to view content and add likes, but can’t enter text information. This is how we can protect older users from accidentally publishing text”, says Ivan.
The project plans to earn money on the Freemium model – which means the basic functions are free, but additional options are chargeable. For example, the Premium package includes functions such as reminders about when to take particular medications. If the reminder is ignored, the caregiver will be notified by text and email.
EasyFamilyApps.com received a $500,000 cash injection from American and other international investors (the identities and amounts are not disclosed).
The project is primarily aimed at the American market – where there are more than 50 million elder citizens and their caregivers, and only half of these currently use the internet. The market in the BRICS countries, Spain and Arabic countries is even larger – amounting to more than 100 million old people. “At this stage, we are targeting the US market, where Facebook dominates social networking. All our apps are available in Russian as well”, – told Ivan Osadchiy, founder of EasyFamilyApps. “Facebook is the most popular social network in the United States. That’s why we decided to begin with this social network, which will allow grandmothers to stay in touch with their friends and family.”
In the U.S. experts view Osadchij’s project optimistically. “I think the most important thing to remember is that older adults have much to contribute when they go online, and that the real special essence of this is the telling and wisdom of older people that can be connected as they share with younger people, connected so that they can be a role in a part of their grandchildren’s life”, – says Mary Furlong, CEO at Mary Furlong and Associates, founder of SeniorNet, Third Age Media, expert in aging.
Laurie Orlov, another expert in Aging research, agrees with her colleague: “I believe that 100% of older adults need to be online, that the Internet has enabled people to have access to other people, to information, to socialization that otherwise they will be completely missing.”
Russian experts take a more critical view. “In Russia at the moment attention is directed towards communities of personal profiles in projects within the e-commerce sphere. It suggests that it would be around a year from now before this kind of project would attract a Russian investor”, says Stanislav Timoshuk, leading manager for business development at the Skolkovo Technopark.
“This project has a better chance in the West. The optimum model for monetisation would be Freemium sign-ups alongside contextual advertising. The problem would be a restricted market – it clearly won’t be able to gather a billion users.”
Read the full version on Russia Beyond The Headlines.
