Sisters help seniors navigate the digital world

What began as a lockdown exercise to help the elders in the family become digitally independent is today a business venture

T he COVID-19 crisis has provided two sisters with an unexpected opportunity to explore a business model.

Shreya Bajaj and Surbhi Bajaj started a lockdown project to enable some of the seniors in their family and extended family become “digitally independent” and the effort has now grown into a business venture, “Easy Hai”.

Noticing that these seniors were out of their depth in the family Zoom sessions, the duo started the internal classes, also covering how to navigate the Internet and find reliable information.

“They just had to be coaxed into exploring the features in their high-end mobiles. My mom is an example,” says Shreya, who runs a restaurant in Chennai.

“With fake news on the rise, often via forwards, we did a session on how to spot it. Everyone appreciated it and that’s when we decided to take the exercise to a wider target group,” says Shreya.

A poster about these classes was posted on Instagram.

“The post was a hit and we got cracking,” says Shreya.

Today, they conduct 12 to 15 classes a week, each ranging between one and one-a-half hours, and the batch size ranges from 10 to 15 people.

The fee per class is ₹150 and anyone who signs up for a set of classes is eligible for a discount.

The initiative initially targeted only seniors, but the sisters extended it to others, after they realised that many of those outside the age group were also looking for these skills.

The sisters are helped by two other trainers who conduct the online classes. Their clients are from different parts of the country and even from organisations like Rotary, FICCI and Friends for Tribal Society, they say.

Isn’t online teaching challenging? “Yes, but not as bad as I imagined it would be,” she says.

How to use Google calendar to stay organised; starting on Twitter; Facebook for beginners; how to download and manage apps and how to make a video collage are among the topics covered in the classes.

They also teach participants how to verify WhatsApp forwards, fake news and master the use of privacy and security settings in apps. For more details, visit https://www.easy-hai.com/