Longevity comes of age

In India, slowing ageing is no longer a niche concept — it is gradually becoming part of how people in the country have started to think about their health. The demographic trends highlight this emerging shift. India’s senior population (aged 60 years and above), currently at 153 million, is expanding rapidly and is projected to reach 347 million by 2050, fuelling this urgent cultural focus on preventive health and lifestyle management.

This, in turn, is making longevity the new buzzword of the wellness industry and leading to a commercial momentum unfolding in an already booming market. As per a report by business consulting firm Grand View Research, the global longevity and wellness pharmaceutical market was valued at $63.4 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $106.0 billion by 2033, growing at a CAGR of 6.7%. India is expected to outpace the global average, with its longevity and wellness pharmaceutical market forecast to grow from $2.15 billion in 2025 to $4.09 billion by 2033, at a CAGR of 8.5%.

Hype or need?

Recently, American venture capitalist and entrepreneur Bryan Johnson questioned his life choices after being diagnosed with an ‘incurable’ disease. The 48-year-old billionaire biohacker is the same person who had previously talked about looking to ‘conquer death’ and claimed to have the body of an 18-year-old. Some of his most viral stunts in pursuit of eternal life include taking regular blood plasma transfusions from his own teenage son, claiming it had properties to reverse ageing.

Johnson’s diagnosis of autoimmune gastritis, a chronic condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells in the stomach lining, may have left him questioning whether his pursuit for better health and a longer life was worth all the effort, but longevity, as an interest area, has already become a major global wellness and financial megatrend.

The idea is to extend healthspan — the number of years a person lives free from chronic disease — rather than just extending the total lifespan.

“The interest in longevity and healthy ageing is not very surprising globally, simply because the healthcare systems have reached saturation where most pathologies can be addressed by appropriate and timely medical interventions,” says Deepak Saini, professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru.

Saini is also the convenor of the Longevity India Initiative, a pioneering research programme of the  IISc aimed at “extending human healthspan and promoting healthy ageing tailored to the unique genetic, lifestyle, and demographic needs of the Indian population”.

“The mainstay of this industry as of today is to fix what’s bothering you so that you can live without any discomfort. Technically that would require addressing the problem followed by maintaining wellness for as long as possible,” he adds.

In India, the disease burden is changing — infectious diseases, while still significant, have given way to chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, arthritis, dementia and osteoporosis as the leading causes of illness and death. According to the Sample Registration Survey of India for 2024, released this year, non-communicable diseases now account for more than 60% of the total deaths in the country. Many of these illnesses develop gradually over decades, making prevention and early intervention not only medically desirable but economically essential.

“The growing interest in living longer, healthier lives in India is an important trend, influenced by factors such as changing consumer habits, health statistics, and a rapidly expanding wellness market,” says Dr Prasun Chatterjee, group clinical lead, geriatric medicine and longevity science, Apollo Hospitals.

Indian landscape

Across India’s urban healthcare landscape, hospitals are expanding preventive health programmes that combine comprehensive laboratory testing, advanced imaging, cardiac risk assessment, genetic counselling where appropriate, and digital monitoring. Annual health check-ups, once considered executive perks, are increasingly marketed to middle-class families seeking to detect health risks before symptoms emerge.

Artificial intelligence is beginning to enhance radiology, pathology and predictive analytics, helping clinicians identify patterns that might otherwise be overlooked, while wearable devices continuously monitor heart rate, sleep quality, physical activity and even cardiac rhythm, generating streams of health data that were unimaginable a decade ago.

Last year, Deepinder Goyal, founder of Zomato and former CEO of Eternal, launched a $25-million personally-backed fund under his longevity venture Continue to invest in global research into human ageing and biological health. Continue operates on the principle that the human body has ‘leverage points’ or biological mechanisms that can influence ageing. Goyal was also an investor in Ultrahuman, a Bengaluru-based healthtech startup that tracked vital signs of the body.

Goyal has described the venture as beginning with investigating a simple hypothesis that, if validated, could fundamentally change our understanding of biology and ageing.

Goyal has repeatedly stressed that the work is entirely self-funded and driven by scientific curiosity rather than commercial objectives. He supports researchers worldwide pursuing “unconventional, first-principles questions in biology, particularly those challenging established assumptions about human ageing”.

When announcing his fund, Goyal had said on X, “For over a decade, I have believed that most of the world’s problems stem from our short human lifespans. Continue Research’s goal is to extend healthy human function long enough that humans stop making short-term decisions.” He said it would be a “multi-decadal journey” that would “lead us into the post-Darwin era”.

Growth engine

For brands, longevity is now becoming a way to unlock new growth. From beauty to supplements and health screening, several companies are trying to tap into this market by shifting from short-term wellness to long-term healthspan.

Companies such as Outlive India offer personalised longevity programmes focused on nutrition, metabolic health, fasting-mimicking protocols, fitness and lifestyle optimisation, while Decode Age provides biological age testing, epigenetic and gut microbiome analysis, longevity supplements and educational resources designed to help individuals better understand the ageing process. Other emerging players include Loop Health and Truemeds, which emphasise preventive health and chronic disease management through technology-enabled care, alongside diagnostic providers such as Redcliffe Labs, Apollo Longevity Clinic, and Metropolis Healthcare that are expanding access to advanced health screening and biomarkers relevant to healthy ageing.

“Longevity in India cannot become another category built purely around supplements, expensive diagnostics or cutting-edge interventions. It has to be data and outcome-driven, and ultimately accessible enough to become part of how people live every day,” says Outlive India founder Varun Khanna. The company provides plans and packages for one-day and five-day fasting longevity programmes, supported by a team of scientists, nutritionists, and doctors. “Our customers have full transparency of the people and companies involved at every stage, from production to packaging,” he adds.

Khanna also believes that the commercial opportunity in longevity is not necessarily about creating entirely new behaviours. “In many cases, it is about formalising enormous existing behaviours, making them easier to follow and giving consumers a way to understand whether they are actually working.”

A large part of the longevity conversation gets muffled and misdirected on account of the unscientific discourses on social media. As per the company’s mission, as outlined on the website, longevity is about conscious ageing, and unlocking the full potential of the body. “I believe the Indian longevity opportunity may ultimately take us closer to home, towards nutrition, fasting, movement and other practices that have existed in some form for generations, now validated, structured and made measurable through modern science,” says Khanna.

Meanwhile, as per a 2026 study by market research company SNS Insider, of all the types of technologies, genomics and epigenetics are estimated to capture a share of 24.25% of the global market revenue due to their significance in the field of personalised medicine and biological ageing studies. Biomarkers and ageing clock technologies (AI computed algorithms to estimate biological ageing versus chronological ageing) are estimated to be the ones that will register the fastest growth until 2035, with a CAGR of 12.49%. This is due to increasing demand for assessing one’s biological age and health monitoring.

“Although the field of personalised genomics is quite new and has not yet come into full practice, it has great potential in this area in the future,” says Dr Sushila Kataria, vice chairperson, internal medicine, Medanta Gurugram. “People with a high family incidence of diseases, especially cancer, ask about the probability of them contracting it and whether they should consider taking genetic counselling or undergoing whole genome testing in order to reduce their risks.”

On the research front, Longevity India, a multidisciplinary initiative led by the IISc with academic and clinical partners, is advancing scientific understanding of ageing and promoting collaboration across medicine, biology and public health. “One of the first initiatives of the study is to define the Indian baseline health features which can be used to develop predictive algorithms for preventive healthcare,” says Saini, convenor of the initiative.

He further explains, “There are three features which affect one’s health — what we eat, what we breathe, and what we come in contact with. And all the three parameters in India are different from what the Western population faces.”

According to Saini, the long-term vision would be to shift healthcare practices from tertiary care or large hospitals to primary healthcare facilities. “Very simple diagnostic tests can reveal early onset of pathologies or early intervention which will fall into preventive healthcare regime.”

Diagnostics represent another critical pillar of the longevity economy. Screening for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, kidney function, liver health, vitamin deficiencies, bone density and certain cancers has become increasingly common among middle-aged adults. While excessive or unnecessary testing remains a concern among clinicians, appropriately targeted preventive screening has become an accepted component of evidence-based healthcare for individuals with relevant risk factors.

Around the world, specialised clinics now offer biological age assessments, advanced biomarker testing, microbiome analyses, continuous glucose monitoring, hormone evaluations and personalised health optimisation programmes.

Saini says that longevity treatments can be understood as three phases — the first point is to identify the issue which is preventing us from leading a fulfilling life, the second is to retain wellness status as long as possible, and the third is to prevent future illnesses,” he says. “However, the fundamental problem for India is the lack of basic health data and parameters which are relevant for disease prediction and preventive health regime deployment.”

Technology is becoming another defining characteristic of India’s longevity ecosystem. Wearable devices that monitor heart rate, physical activity, sleep quality and blood oxygen levels are no longer niche products but mainstream consumer electronics. Continuous glucose monitors, once reserved primarily for people with diabetes, are increasingly being used by health-conscious individuals seeking insights into metabolic health, although experts caution that evidence for routine use among healthy individuals remains limited. Artificial intelligence is also finding applications in preventive healthcare, from interpreting imaging scans and analysing retinal photographs to predicting disease risk using electronic health records.

A global summary by market research firm Spherical Insights showed that the wellness technology market accounted for approximately $57.1 billion in 2025 and is expected to surpass $208.36 billion by 2035, expanding at a CAGR of 13.82%. Notably, the global wellness tourism market reached nearly $990.4 billion in 2025 and is anticipated to hit $2.4 trillion by 2035, growing at a CAGR of 9.3%.

Filling the gaps

The World Health Organization has consistently emphasised that functional ability, rather than the pursuit of youthfulness, should remain the central objective of ageing policy and healthcare.

The recently established network of Ayushman Arogya Mandirs, grassroots public health facilities in India created by upgrading existing sub-health centres and primary health centres, places renewed emphasis on comprehensive primary healthcare, including screening for non-communicable diseases that contribute significantly to disability in later life.

The private sector is also moving to fill emerging gaps. Corporates increasingly incorporate preventive screenings, mental health support, nutrition counselling and fitness coaching in their wellness programmes as employers recognise the long-term benefits of maintaining a healthier workforce.

Many advanced longevity services remain concentrated in metropolitan areas and accessible primarily to higher-income consumers, raising important questions about equity and access in a country where healthcare expenditure continues to be highly out-of-pocket for many households.

India is part of a much larger global shift. Countries such as Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the United States have invested heavily in healthy ageing research, precision medicine, age-friendly cities and technologies that support independent living. Japan, where nearly one in three people is aged 65 years or older, has pioneered community-based integrated care systems designed to help older adults remain active within their own neighbourhoods. Singapore has developed national strategies focused on preventive health, active ageing and lifelong employability, while the United States and Europe have seen the emergence of longevity-focused biotechnology, regenerative medicine and specialised clinics.

Going forward, the longevity industry, if guided by scientific evidence rather than marketing hype, has the potential to become more than a commercial opportunity, say experts. “While people in India are living longer, many aren’t enjoying good health during those extra years. This has led to a change in focus from just living longer to living better, ensuring more years are spent in good health rather than in sickness,” adds Dr Chatterjee of Apollo Hospitals