Samarth Elder Care and Dementia India Alliance Sign MoU to Help NRI Children Care for Parents Living with Dementia

Dementia hides behind old age in India where early symptoms are brushed off. Samarth releases the Memory Compass on World Alzheimer’s Day, to inspire action.

NEW DELHI, DELHI, INDIA, September 21, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- For an estimated 4.9 million Indian-Americans with ageing parents back home, a weekly phone call is often the only window into daily life thousands of miles away. It is also, one of the least reliable places to catch the earliest signs that something has changed.

Cognitive decline in India is frequently dismissed as an ordinary part of growing old rather than flagged, recognized and treated as a medical condition. The Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India (ARDSI) estimated in its Dementia in India 2020 report that 5.3 million Indians aged 60 and above were living with dementia in 2020, a number that is projected to double in the coming decades. Despite this scale, research published in the Journal of Global Health Reports found that only 1 in 10 people living with dementia in India receive a formal diagnosis, treatment, or care, a gap researchers attribute largely to limited awareness, stigma, and a shortage of specialist care.

That gap becomes harder to close from abroad. Repeating a story, misplacing regular use objects, missing routine medication, or forgetting a recent conversation while recalling decades-old memories in vivid detail can sound, indistinguishable from a parent simply having an ordinary day. The same cognitive vulnerability can also leave elderly parents more exposed to financial scams, a growing concern for NRI families who often discover the damage only after the fact.

The real opportunity for dementia care in India lies in building the bridge between clinical expertise and the families who are living with dementia every day.

The Memory Compass
Samarth participated in DemCon 2026, which is the third edition of Dementia India Alliance’s international conference dedicated to advancing dementia care in India. Committed to help families start noticing, Samarth Elder Care is releasing The Memory Compass, a guide developed with its clinical and care operations teams and designed with older adults in mind. It includes a short self-reflection questionnaire adapted from the Cognitive Failures Questionnaire 2.0, a peer-reviewed research instrument developed at the Australian National University, alongside observable cues families can listen for on routine phone and video calls, such as repeated questions, missed medication, or confusion about recent events. The guide also describes how Samarth's ground-based Care Managers conduct respectful, non-clinical check-ins during regular in-person visits, well before a crisis makes the need for medical attention obvious.

The Memory Compass is an educational tool, not a clinical assessment. It is meant to help families recognize when it is time to seek a medical evaluation.

"Families abroad are not failing to notice the signs. Since a phone call was never designed to catch a subtle shift in memory or behavior, and in India, where cognitive decline is still so often waved away as old age, the right tool is what they need," said Asheesh Gupta, who was a panelist at DemCon 2026, after signing the MoU with Dementia India Alliance.

The Memory Compass is designed for use by both families (for themselves and their parents in India) and journalists covering the diaspora's growing eldercare needs, and is available free on September 21, World Alzheimer's Day.

For a generation of NRI professionals managing careers, children, and now ageing parents from a different continent, early detection is rarely about a single dramatic moment. It is about someone on the ground who visits often enough to notice the difference between a bad day and the beginning of something else, and who is trained to say so before it becomes an emergency.

About Samarth
Samarth Elder Care is India’s leading professional elder care company, helping older adults live with dignity and independence while giving their families, wherever in the world they may be, the assurance of high-quality care. Founded in 2016 by alumni of IIT, IIM, Cambridge, Yale and McKinsey, Samarth operates across 350+ cities in India, serves families in 33+ countries, and is backed by Social Alpha. Its services span in-home care with a dedicated Care Manager, community and wellbeing programmes, and specialist clinical care through the Samarth Clinic for Healthy Ageing.
When a family cannot be there, Samarth is.

Source:
Alzheimer's and Related Disorders Society of India (ARDSI). Dementia in India 2020. Cochin: ARDSI, 2020:
https://dementiacarenotes.in/dementia/dementia-reports-studies-policy-news-from-india-and-outside/.
https://ruralindiaonline.org/en/library/resource/dementia-in-india-2020/
https://ardsi.org/

“Dementia in India – a call for action.” Journal of Global Health Reports, 2019
Journal page: https://www.joghr.org/article/12221-dementia-in-india-a-call-for-action
Direct PDF: https://www.joghr.org/api/v1/articles/12221-dementia-in-india-a-call-for-action.pdf
DOI link: https://doi.org/10.29392/joghr.3.e2019078

Goodhew, S. C., & Edwards, M. (2024). The Cognitive Failures Questionnaire 2.0.
Article (ScienceDirect): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886923003951
Free open-access PDF (ANU repository): https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/items/b66f7f8f-6e5b-4297-bbef-45d68a86d76e
DOI link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112472
Corrigendum (2025): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886925000297.

Chitralekha Samaddar Sen
Samarth Life Management Pvt Ltd
+91 87006 90186
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