Priya Living Continues India Expansion With Other New Senior Living Concepts Planned

In the last 12 months, Priya Living CEO Arun Paul has been to India about a dozen times.

Paul’s travel schedule reflects a torrid international senior living development pace set by the company he leads. Priya Living has a burgeoning but growing operation in India with four senior living communities under construction. In 2024, the company is moving forward with growth on multiple fronts, according to Paul.

Its first community in India, Flower Valley, opened last year in Gurgaon, Haryana, India, with two more set to open in Hyderabad, in southern India; and the other in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad by the year’s end. Priya Living is focused on creating the structure needed to bring Priya Living’s operational acumen honed in the U.S. to India.

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Priya Living is still expanding its presence in India with multiple communities under development in various markets, Paul told SHN. With a “massive talent pool” to draw from in India, Paul said Priya Living is focused on building strong operational teams in the country.

“We’re spending more than half of our time on the people part of the business in making sure that we have the right people on our team, and it takes effort,” Paul said. “We’re an outsider coming in and, in a sense, a startup in India, so we have to work on building trust.”

India growth continues as Priya teases ‘new model’ to come

Priya Living is continuing to grow its presence in India on the cusp of 2025, and the operator is also readying a new concept that Paul teased during a recent interview but wasn’t ready to discuss.

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About a year ago, Priya Living unveiled its Priya Flower Valley community in Gurgaon. As planned, the community caters to people who live in the U.S. but want to visit family and friends in India. Prospects can also book stays online without the help of a salesperson.

The community is planned such that residents can book their stays online ranging from just 30 days to a full 12 months. The community is geared toward people living in the U.S. who want to visit India, such as expats.

“We saw that there’s a very strong aspirational demand for people from the U.S., our current customers, who want to go to India; but also, demand from all over the globe,” Paul told SHN last year.

The cost of labor and price of construction in India has allowed the company to build communities with upscale features and amenities, and staff them for far less than in the U.S. Some costs the company is incurring there are just “10% to 15% of what they are in the U.S.,” he told SHN in 2023.

Before the year’s end, Paul expects Priya to open two additional communities in India: One in Hyderabad, in southern India; and the other in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad. The communities are planned with Ahmedabad to be 52 units and Hyderabad is 127 units.

This near-term growth comes as Priya Living is also set to expand to four additional Indian cities in 2025.

“The ability to scale is different, with the scale of development being just massive,” Paul said. “People are building cities, which creates a lot of opportunities for people, whereas in U.S. markets, you might get a couple of good opportunities a year.”

In the U.S., Priya Living has four communities in California geared toward active and independent older adults living in fun and eclectic properties.

With Priya Living having an established and successful U.S. presence, Paul said it was only natural last year that the company launched a similar operating company in India. .

“If you have a product that works in the U.S., there’s a good chance it’s a great product, and the same is true for senior living, so I just think it’s only natural,” Paul said.

With staffing challenges still forcing operators to get creative in hiring, retention, and reducing turnover, Paul said he believes senior living operators could find “solutions that are available globally” to solve staffing woes.

“We have to think about where the labor is coming from, and I think Asia, for example, you’re seeing a country like Japan with the issue of an aging population, and Japanese elders are moving to places like India or Malaysia, or people in the U.S. are choosing to retire in Mexico or Central America,” Paul said.

By the end of 2025, Paul expects Priya will have operations in seven cities in India. He also teased future growth in the U.S. but was unable to share details of “a new product” offered to older adults in the future.

“There’s a new model that we’ve been working on, and we’re excited to try,” Paul said.

‘All part of the same effort’

While the company’s communities in the U.S. and India are separated by thousands of miles, Paul views Priya Living’s growth in both countries as “all part of the same effort.” But where a difference lies is in the pace at which Priya can grow internationally, citing favorable development factors and India’s strong housing market fundamentals, Paul said.

That vision came into focus after U.S.-based customers told Priya leaders they wanted to spend long durations of time in India to visit friends and family.

“You can build much cheaper and much faster, but we’re very focused,” Paul said. “We see the U.S. and India as very related.”

That means exporting programming that’s worked well in the U.S. to future Indian communities while building new lifestyle and programming to meet the needs of older adults in India, Paul said.

Priya Living has built out a flexible living program for residents that offers short-term stays to new residents akin to staying at a full service hotel. That was born out of older adults visiting from outside the San Francisco Bay Area wanting to visit for weekends or month-long stays to spend time with adult children or visit friends, Paul said.

“We know that choosing to move into a community is a big decision, and this model is very similar to what we’re doing in India, as it’s an aspiration for people as they age to not be in one place in their 70s and 80s,” Paul said. “What we realized was happening was that people have that desire.”

With the flexibility offering independence and freedom to not commit to a full-year contract, Paul said Priya Living has been able to resonate with customers and draw long-term move-ins at its communities once first attracted to the flexible living model.

“It meets people where they are, and we think it really gives them what they want,” Paul added. “It makes a lot of sense to meet people earlier and build that relationship with them sooner, before they are ready to settle down.”

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