A few years ago, Dr Krithika Kumar was immersed in research after completing her postdoctoral at the Molecular Biology and Genetics department at Cornell University. She, however, dreamt of a life beyond academia, in Bengaluru, her home town. One day, a conversation with her father took an unexpected turn.

Her father, a dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur, who launched many successful businesses since his youth, rued about how the elderly in the country have few avenues to go and exercise their mental faculties. He, of course, had a verdant, idyllic expanse — a country club-like space — in mind, but Kumar and her husband, Dr Nick Ratterman, who completed his postdoctoral work in the department of Neurobiology and Behaviour, were piqued at a different possibility.