ET | Time to Unlock Silver Abundance

Do you believe India is a young country? If you quickly answered yes, you would be right. But not for long. The silver economy in India is misunderstood as merely healthcare and nursing homes. Yet it is an $8.7 billion market and growing.

India is at the end phase of its demographic dividend. From 2030 onwards, the ratio of the working age population to the dependent population will start to decline. In 2047, 300 million senior citizens will wave the national flag for India’s 100th anniversary! Twenty years later, we will have the largest population of older adults in the world. It is time to shift our mental model.

This past January in Davos, I was part of a panel discussion on longevity. My co-panellist enthusiastically drew us a vision where science would soon catch up with the ancient human desire for immortality. People would live for 150 years, and then up to 500 years. Like some jellyfish and newts, humans would then crack the code for DNA repair, and live almost indefinitely.

Death is a bug, not a feature, some longevity champions have declared. Being rather old myself, at 66 years, I expressed some concern whether the people around us, especially younger ones, would really like us to live that long. My mother-in-law, Durga Nilekani, passed away peacefully in February at the age of 101. We miss her dearly, but she would always say with a gentle smile, “100 is too much.”

Living longer feels less important than living better. Nevertheless, the race to eternal life might yield many medical miracles on the way for longer healthspans. Already, advances in diagnostics, pharma, genetics and immunotherapy are

delaying death due to disease. What more does the future hold?

How to age well

Recently, in Bengaluru, we convened a crosssector group of scientists, media professionals and social leaders to ask a simple but profound question: what does it take to age well in India? The consensus was clear: ageing is not a problem to be solved, but a societal invitation to reimagine our systems, narratives and institutions.

The reimagining that India needs to unlock its silver abundance

To do this, we must look at the interplay of Samaaj (Society), Sarkaar (State) and Bazaar (Market). While the state provides infrastructure and policy, and society provides care and connection, it is the market that has the untapped potential to reshape the narrative and possibilities for ageing in India.

Are our markets and media failing our elders? A study of 2,500 Indian advertisements found that older adults are either invisible or depicted as frail, dependent and technophobic nearly half the time. In our films and OTT platforms, they are rarely the complex, vibrant people they are in real life; they are cranky, bedridden, or superhuman.

This is more than just bad marketing; it is a dangerous reinforcement of internalised ageism. When we absorb the story that old age is synonymous with diminishment, we begin to live it. There is a massive economic opportunity to change this version. Can we have more 80-year-olds who love adventure, retired executives who mentor startups, or grandmothers as mental health counsellors?

One of the most startling insights from our Bengaluru meeting was the “40-to-1 mismatch”. For every job opportunity available to those who have stepped away from full-time careers, 40 people are still waiting. This may be a structural failure in our markets. Often, HR departments have younger gatekeepers who filter out older candidates based on outdated assumptions about energy or tech-savviness.

Forward-thinking organisations are beginning to see an “experience dividend”. They frame it as the highest “wisdom per rupee” investment. Older workers bring institutional memory, steadiness and a unique ability to mentor younger teams. At last, some innovation has arrived. Startups like Silver Talkies are creating vibrant social and economic hubs for elders, while platforms like The Elders or WisdomCircle connect retired professionals with companies looking for niche expertise. Even large-scale industries are experimenting with “phased retirement” or advisory roles that keep the “wisdom” in the building while providing the flexibility older professionals desire.

Seniors as consumers

The silver economy in India is misunderstood as merely healthcare and nursing homes. Yet it is an $8.7 billion market and growing. For example, Antara Senior Living reimagines residential spaces as active, socially connected communities. Khyaal offers holistic care, from digital literacy to financial security, tailored for Indian seniors.

These for-profit innovations are essential because they treat older adults as consumers with agency, not recipients of charity. When brands and storytellers see the 225 million people above the age of 55 as a constituency worth speaking to, change will accelerate.

Maybe there is too much of a data gap. Our healthcare system is currently oriented toward sickness—we measure what is broken, not what is thriving. The Bharat Study (Biomarkers for Healthy Ageing) at IISc is a vital step toward establishing India-specific baselines for wellness. We need to understand why Indians age the way they do, factoring in our unique genetics, diet and environment.

Maybe then the market can move from the current fragmented specialist care towards a more integrated model that brings back the “family physician” empowered with 21st century tech.

We cannot talk about growing old in India without speaking about women. Women’s ageing is distinct, marked by physiological and social inflection points like menopause, widowhood and caregiving burdens.

In India, elders contribute $68 billion to the GDP and provide 16 million hours of caregiving annually. Much of this labour is performed by women, yet remains invisible in our economic data. A gender-sensitive approach to ageing is not just a social priority but an economic one.

We are in the early stages of a field in formation. India’s youth bulge will soon become a longevity imperative.

If we get ahead of the curve, we can unlock a new social abundance. Older adults can be happy and productive with a lower environmental footprint.

India’s preparation for the inevitable must start now, in our boardrooms, our media houses and our hearts. In many ways, our society could not fully benefit from the demographic dividend we enjoyed for years! Too many young people were left waiting at the door. We cannot let them down twice.

First Published in The Economic Times