It was just past five in the evening when we met at Central Park Flower Valley, along the Badshahpur–Sohna Road in Gurugram. A soft breeze moved through the corridors as the city slowed down below. Priya Living Flower Valley occupies the 12th to 14th floors of The Room, and our conversation unfolded inside a quiet two-bedroom apartment on the 12th floor, with the light fading gently outside the windows. It felt less like a site visit and more like stepping into a lived-in idea. When Arun Paul began speaking about ageing, it became clear why. He does not frame it in the language of decline or caution, but in terms of growth, capability and possibility.
For him, later life is not a winding down but a widening out. That belief sits at the heart of Priya Living, India’s first purpose-driven communities designed for what he calls “the third stage of life”. Paul’s journey to this idea begins far from India, in the quiet emotional terrain of an only child growing up in the United States to immigrant parents from Calcutta.
A personal beginning
Paul was born and raised in the US after his parents migrated in the 1960s, leaving behind family, friends and a familiar way of life. As an only child, he shared a close bond with them and grew up acutely aware of the sacrifice they had made. America, he sensed, was never fully home for them. They had chosen it for his future.
That awareness stayed with him. “I always felt I wanted to repay them in some way,” Paul recalls. Years later, that instinct would quietly shape the most consequential decision of his professional life.
From placemaking to purpose
Before Priya Living, Paul had already built a formidable career in global hospitality and real estate. He spent decades working on what he describes as “placemaking” creating environments that go beyond buildings to shape how people feel and live. He developed large resort-style residential communities and co-founded two luxury hospitality companies that operated some of the world’s most exclusive resorts across the US, Mexico, Fiji, Costa Rica and Europe.
These were properties that competed at the very top of the market, often compared to Aman Resorts for their attention to detail and experiential depth. Paul believed this was his life’s work.
Then his parents grew older.
A duplex that changed everything
As Paul began visiting them more frequently, he floated a simple idea: what if they moved closer to him in San Francisco? His initial plan was modest. He would buy a duplex, house his parents in one unit, and have their closest friends live in the other.
Word spread quickly. Through phone calls that felt like a game of telephone, aunties and uncles from across the US began calling him. They spoke of loneliness, cultural disconnect, and a need they had felt for decades but had never seen addressed: a place where older Indians could live with dignity, familiarity and community.
America had a vast senior living industry, but none that felt culturally or emotionally right for Indian families. Paul had toured such facilities with his parents and found them deeply uncomfortable. They were functional, but soulless.
That was the turning point.
Birth of Priya Living
Paul decided to redirect his hospitality expertise toward something deeply personal. In 2013, Priya Living opened its first community in San Francisco. His parents moved in. What followed was organic growth across the US, driven by an underserved NRI population searching for belonging in later life.
As the concept gained momentum, another question kept surfacing: when would Priya Living come to India?
Initially, India was not part of the plan. But conversations with NRIs revealed a powerful aspiration. Many wanted to return to India, at least part-time, if there were communities that allowed independence without dependence on family. Six months abroad, six months in India. A home, not a compromise.
India’s changing family structure
What Paul discovered on closer engagement was that the demand was not limited to NRIs. Indian families themselves had changed. Children were moving cities or countries. Women were no longer expected to anchor multigenerational households. The old system, where ageing was absorbed quietly within the family unit, was no longer sustainable.
India, like the rest of the world, was ageing. But unlike the West, it was doing so without a cultural or physical infrastructure that supported autonomy and purpose in later life.
The third stage of life
Paul is careful to avoid the term “senior living”. He rejects it outright. “We see ageing as the highest level of life,” he says. Childhood has school. Adulthood has work. But the third stage, he argues, has been left without spaces designed for growth.
Priya Living positions itself as hospitality for the third stage of life. Its communities are not age-restricted, nor do they segregate residents by years lived. Younger people live alongside older adults, drawn by depth, conversation and a sense of meaning that is often absent in conventional urban housing.
This intergenerational mix, Paul believes, is not incidental but essential to how the community functions. Older adults are not looking to be separated from the world; they want to remain connected to energy, ideas and movement. Younger generation, on the other hand, are often drawn to the perspective, patience and depth that come from lived experience. In a culture that tends to silo age groups, Priya Living creates everyday encounters across generations, allowing relationships to form naturally. The result is a community that feels balanced and alive, where learning moves in both directions and age becomes a point of connection rather than division.
Designing for capability, not fear
The design philosophy of Priya Living is intentionally counterintuitive. There are no visual cues that scream frailty. No institutional language. No obsession with limitations.
Apartments are modern and contemporary, meant to be emotionally desirable not medically suggestive. Safety features can be added when needed, but they do not define the space. The message is subtle but powerful: you are capable.
Instead of designing around fall risks, Priya Living designs around possibility. Co-working spaces sit alongside movement and dance studios. Residents can ride horses, play cricket or badminton, or simply sit and talk. The goal is not to manage ageing, but to expand it.
Programmes that redefine ageing
What truly differentiates Priya Living is what Paul calls the “software” rather than the hardware. While many Indian players in this space are real estate-driven, Priya’s focus is on daily experience.
The communities run structured programmes in entrepreneurship, leadership and philanthropy. Paul challenges the assumption that founders are young. Older adults, he argues, have capital, networks and judgment built over decades. With partners like ISB faculty, Priya offers entrepreneurship programmes tailored to later life.
Residents are encouraged to start businesses, write books, build NGOs, mentor others or become philanthropists. Creation, not consumption, is the organising principle.
Growing across India
Priya Living opened its first Indian community in Hyderabad in early 2024. Ahmedabad and Baroda are next, with plans for Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Goa and Varanasi in the pipeline.
While the initial focus was on tier-one cities, Paul sees long-term potential in smaller cities as well, where older adults often live alone with limited social engagement. Physical proximity, he believes, is irreplaceable.
A cultural shift in the making
Paul sees India at the beginning of a long journey. Senior living in the US has a 40 to 50 year history. India is only just starting. But the direction is clear.
As populations age and family structures continue to evolve, the question is no longer whether such communities are needed, but how thoughtfully they are built.
For Paul, the answer lies in changing the language around ageing itself. Not what older adults should avoid, but what they are still capable of becoming.
In creating Priya Living, he has not only built communities. He has offered a radical idea: that the later chapters of life may, in fact, be the most powerful of all.
