Fast forward 15 years, and it's my mom trying to understand what was happening with her Dad, who was always "just fine." Another 15 years, and it's my turn. Mom lives in the States, just 3000 miles away. She is tough and manages a lot on her own, but when something bad happens, like needing an ambulance ride, she wants me to know everything and to help her through it. And then Dad, now just 10 miles away, enduring cancer and surgeries and chemo and radiation. He may not have been in India, but I was still his Indian son, and it didn't seem any easier that he was close. I had my own career and family. I couldn't always be there, but there isn't one decision I didn't want to be a part of.

Flights. Calls. WhatsApp. Dr. Google. This is no way to care for my parents.

That's why we built Setuvi.

Someone would call after he'd seen the doctor, and I'd ask what they said, and the answer was almost always some version of "I don't know" or "I can't remember exactly." Everyone was doing their best. It still felt like trying to hold water in my hands.

A few years later, when my mother was injured, I was the one asking those questions from far away — and getting the same scattered pieces. "The doctor mentioned something about her medication." "I'll ask my sister, she was there." I'd lie awake putting fragments together, never sure I had the whole picture. It was never really about the miles. Even people I knew who lived close to their parents were piecing care together the same way, from half-remembered phone calls.

For years I worked in intensive care. I've seen what happens when the people caring for someone are working from half the story — and I could feel us becoming that family.

That's why we built Setuvi.