Could ‘Tinder For Grannies’ Save Elderly People’s Lives?

Circly (known as Pieni piiri in Finnish), a mobile service for the elderly in Finland, has opened a crowdfunding round on FundedByMe.

The round is expected to close at least €50,000 equity from private investors. €18,726 has already been raised already from contributors in Finland, Sweden, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain.

Social contacts

Company founder Matti Kari said: “I started to worry about my granny’s lack of peer contacts after my grandfather passed away in the summer 2010.

“It’s a widely known fact that the lonely ones sometimes talk to the TV due to lack of social contacts. Our service is just as easy to use – it’s built in our DNA to react when someone talks to or smiles at us.”

Real-time video connection enables social and health care service providers to effectively bring their services home. Circly customers include the hospital districts of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS), social and health district of Southern Karelia (Eksote) and many other cities and municipalities providing services to hundreds of thousands of people. The service is used for check-up visits by home care, various kinds of rehabilitation, peer support and doctor’s consultation, just to name a few. The elderly users also benefit from increased communication with friends and family, who can use their existing Android and Apple mobile devices.

Kari said: “Almost half of the home care customers in Finland and Sweden, our current markets, suffer from loneliness. It’s connected to premature deaths and decreased functional capacity. No human being can survive without human interaction. The problem is more or less the same worldwide.

“We’re planning to use the money now being raised to further develop our service to enable our users to find new friends – that is, the Tinder for grannies, and to explore new international markets.”

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