It started on an afternoon with my father.
My father is ninety-three and lives with Parkinson’s. He was watching his favorite story, the Ramayana — hundreds of hours of episodes he loves. Between the thirty-minute episodes, I used to ask him to do a little gentle stretching.
A founder’s story, from Umesh Shah. Written from our own living room, for yours.
The asking didn’t hold
It was simple to suggest and hard to keep going. It didn’t hold with the caretakers. My father tuned my advice out. And it slipped away almost entirely after I left India to come home to the United States, and the reminding fell to a phone call from far away.
The core idea of Koaura Living is rooted in that small, stubborn gap: a parent I love, already settled in front of a screen he trusts, and a few gentle minutes of movement that never quite found their moment.
I kept returning to one picture. Not a new device to learn. Not an app to manage. Just the television he already loves, gently offering a reason to move — and, when he wants it, a familiar face right there with him.
Caring for family, and technology that helps
This is where my own story lives. The wish to care for my family in my retirement years isn’t new for me — it began with caring for my mother. That was the spark, and it never really left.
The other half of me is an engineer. Across thirty-two years and many different roles at Intel, I learned what it feels like to put technology to work on something real and watch it make a difference in people’s lives.
And then there is AI. Since ChatGPT arrived I have been applying its power to nearly everything — including unlocking the quiet potential of the smartphone already in our pockets, so that even caretakers who could not read or write could still use it. Koaura Living sits right where those three meet: family, technology, and AI.
Goonja brought what I couldn’t
My daughter Goonja Shah is Koaura’s co-founder. We were talking about stretching videos for Grandpa. She was in her final year of studying to become a physician then, and she brought what I couldn’t: what she was learning, her empathy, and her belief in the quiet power of family being close.
Her idea was small and exactly right. She would record a short stretching video for Grandpa on her iPhone, send it to him, and have it gently appear on the TV when the right, soft reminder came up — her face, guiding him, on the screen he was already watching.
And the thought of being there for Grandpa in real time, while he was actually stretching, became its own small wish: to be present with him, even from far away.
Goonja is a physician now, just beginning her first year of an internal-medicine residency. She helped start this from inside her studies; she carries it forward from inside the work she trained for.
Built from that need, kept gentle
Each part of Koaura Living grew straight from that living room. The gentle reminder to move, paced for the television, became Guided Stretching. Goonja’s phone-recorded video, sent and waiting to greet Grandpa, became Family Memories. And being there with him while he stretched became Remote Helper — invited family presence, offered when it helps and stepping back when it doesn’t.
For your family, too
We’re building Koaura for our own family. We hope it can be gentle company for yours.
Koaura Living is a wellness experience for gentle movement and family closeness. It is not medical care and does not replace professional advice — see the Wellness Disclaimer.
Bring Koaura Living into your living room
See the plans and start free on the TV your family already gathers around — the same gentle idea this story began with.