---
title: "India’s hired grandchildren bill by the hour, and unused hours roll over"
description: "A small industry rents young companions to India’s well-off elderly, though what clients value most is the part nobody bills for"
author: "Nate Ledger"
published: 2026-11-08T08:57:49Z
modified: 2026-11-08T17:57:37Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/india-s-hired-grandchildren-bill-by-the-hour-and-unused-hour-4fe0c8
language: en
tags: ["aging", "loneliness", "india", "demographics", "care", "asia"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# India’s hired grandchildren bill by the hour, and unused hours roll over

*A small industry rents young companions to India’s well-off elderly, though what clients value most is the part nobody bills for*

By Nate Ledger · November 8, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/india-s-hired-grandchildren-bill-by-the-hour-and-unused-hour-4fe0c8

## In brief

- Indian firms rent young companions, marketed as hired grandchildren, to elderly people whose children often live far away
- One Gurugram provider charges 450 rupees an hour on a 10-hour monthly plan and 400 on a 25-hour plan, and unused hours roll over
- With per capita income near 220,000 rupees a year, the services reach mainly well-off urban families
- India’s over-60 population is projected to reach 347 million by 2050, and older people are expected to outnumber children by 2046
- An academic says hiring companions should not automatically be read as evidence that families have failed

S Budhiraja is in his 80s and lives in Gurugram, the business hub just outside New Delhi. Both of his daughters live in the United States. When he and his wife go to the market, a 26-year-old named Roney Raju goes with them. As [Kartik Sharma reports for Al Jazeera](https://aljazeera.com/news/2026/11/8/rent-a-grandchild-businesses-offering-companions-to-elderly-grow-in-india), Raju is the couple’s “hired grandson.”

Raju holds a master’s degree in social work and has looked after the Budhirajas for a few months. “I feel he understands me 200 percent,” Budhiraja says, which is more understanding than most actual grandsons manage. Raju calls him “family to me” and says the couple see him as “their proxy child, and much more than a service companion.” When Budhiraja had surgery, Raju kept track of the doctors and the medicines, and he kept phoning after his shifts had ended.

That last detail is the whole business in miniature, and I’ll come back to it. First, the pricing.

Raju’s boss, Gaurav Mittal, sells companionship in monthly plans. The 10-hour plan costs 450 rupees ($5) an hour, which works out to 4,500 rupees a month. The 25-hour plan costs 400 rupees ($4.5) an hour, so 10,000 rupees a month. Hours you don’t use roll over into the next month, the way a prepaid phone recharge does. So a grandchild is sold the way mobile data is sold: buy in bulk for a better rate, and don’t worry if you have a quiet month, because the minutes keep. It is an odd way to package a relationship, and it is also probably the only workable way to package one.

![A younger person rests an arm around an older person on a bench beside a large roll of paper displaying three clocks against a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/5817a8d9cfac1384337346081e2be68f87ed2d82.webp)

It is also expensive. India’s per capita income is about 220,000 rupees ($2,750) a year, roughly 18,300 rupees a month, so the 25-hour plan would cost more than half of an average person’s monthly income. Customers are a small slice of comfortable urban families, often with the money coming from children abroad. Firms market the service with names like “children for hire” and “grandchild for rent.” The government puts the value of the whole senior care industry at about $7bn.

None of this is new. A 2017 report counted at least five startups doing it. In 2022 the late Ratan Tata backed a Mumbai startup whose tagline was “Everything Grandkids Do!”, a promise about as broad as a startup can make. The job itself is ordinary: companions take seniors to temples, sit with them in hospitals, play cards with them or just listen. They are vetted by police and shadow senior staff before they work alone, and most have backgrounds in psychology, social work or hospitality.

## The demand side

The demand side is the reason investors might care. According to the India Ageing Report 2023 from UNFPA and the International Institute for Population Sciences, India had [149 million people aged 60 and over in 2022](https://theprint.in/india/indias-elderly-population-to-double-by-2050-will-exceed-children-by-2046-says-unfpa-report/1780515/), about 10.5 percent of the population. By 2050 that share is projected to roughly double, to 20.8 percent, or 347 million people, about the size of the US population. [By 2046](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/02/indias-elderly-population-will-double-and-overtake-children-by-2050.html), older Indians are expected to outnumber children. Meanwhile, children move to Bengaluru or to the US.

![An elderly couple stands beneath a large gray tree with dark blue branches, while cream leaves and paper airplanes drift across a teal background.](https://rews.cc/img/b2907b58837c96d6b0e1730f3ed51b2d13784e46.webp)

Loneliness is common. A 2022 longitudinal ageing study of more than 72,000 respondents found that 20.5 percent of middle-aged and older Indians reported moderate loneliness and 13.3 percent reported severe loneliness. Among over-60s living alone, 37 percent said they felt lonely. Worldwide, a 2025 study commissioned by the World Health Organization found that loneliness affects one in six people and is linked to about 871,000 deaths a year.

Mittal got the idea after his father died four years ago and his mother came to live with him. “The world is not designed keeping the senior citizens as the central pillar,” he says. Santosh Abraham, chief executive of a Bengaluru startup founded in 2015, remembers a client telling him: “I am lonely, I don’t have anyone to talk to.” Some seniors say they feel unwell, then ask the visiting care manager to stay and talk for an hour. “They just want company,” he says. He thinks strangers can be easier to open up to: “With a companion, there is no baggage.” His main rule for trainees: “Talk less and listen more.”

## The hours nobody bills

Back to Raju calling after his shift. The contract sells hours, but clients mostly value whatever happens outside them. Vinay Kumar, a companion at a Hyderabad firm, says: “We are not just taskmasters, but we develop a relationship with our clients.” Clients tell him about health problems they keep from their own children. One client first shut the door on him because they didn’t share a language. Later that man paid for Kumar’s driving lessons and called him his “god-gifted son.” When he died in 2023, his son asked Kumar to help perform the final rites. Kumar also cut his 12-day marriage leave short because a client kept calling.

![A stylized arm wearing a large wristwatch extends diagonally across a teal background, ending in a clenched fist.](https://rews.cc/img/e7502cc7a13326b40da4b3cba9b1dd711a82de5f.webp)

This is the awkward economics of the business. The service is priced at 400 rupees an hour, and its value comes from the companion acting as if it weren’t. A firm that enforced the clock strictly would be selling something worse. A firm that relies on its staff to ignore the clock is, in effect, being subsidised by their goodwill. Prashanth Reddy, who founded Kumar’s firm, sets one boundary: companions are there “to provide support, not to replace doctors or mental health professionals.” He says nothing about replacing sons, which seems to be the part that happens anyway.

The obvious objection is that paying a stranger to sit with your mother means the family has failed. Shilpa Bandyopadhyay, an assistant professor at the Jindal Institute of Behavioural Sciences, disagrees: hiring help “should not automatically be interpreted as evidence that their families have failed.” She asks whether companionship is treated as a real, ongoing need or whether eldercare gets reduced to food, shelter and healthcare. She wants “a more balanced ecosystem of ageing,” in which what counts is whether the older person “feels seen, heard, safe, valued, and meaningfully connected.”

A customer puts the case for the transaction most clearly. Vinnay K, a software professional in the US, has paid for a companion for his mother for five years. “When you pay for a service, you don’t have to feel like you’re asking someone for a favour,” he says. I think that’s the real product. Asking a neighbour or a cousin to check on your mother runs up a debt you’ll have to repay. An invoice closes the account every month. For the son, the money buys freedom from obligation. For the mother, it seems to buy something closer to the opposite.

Asked what he would do if Raju stopped coming, Budhiraja said he would find out why and make sure he came back. “I need him,” he said. “As you grow older, the needs are more.” Under the plan, unused hours roll over. By his account, the needs only grow.