These millennials, after experiencing life-altering losses, are now focused on assisting others in safeguarding their loved ones' legacies.

Becoming a father reignited in him the desire to safeguard the recollections of his cherished ones and their legacies.

When Worley was 16 years old, the idea for his project first emerged. He had lost his paternal grandfather to prostate cancer and his maternal grandmother to Alzheimer's that same year, and both deaths had a profound effect on him.

The 41-year-old British Colombian, who is a father of three active toddlers, stated that after granddad passed away, he didn't have anything tangible to remember him by or to know how he was like as a younger man or a kid.

The loss of family members, a failed business partnership, and the Covid-19 pandemic led three millennials to start new businesses that help people remember and preserve their relationships and family legacy.

Inalife

Inalife, founded by Worley, is a digital platform that enables families to create a family tree for a monthly fee. The platform offers digital storage for family photos, videos, and audio clips, allowing the family to access them presently or in the future.

Worley, who was born and raised in Hong Kong and currently resides there, only began taking action after the Covid pandemic and the death of his mother-in-law in 2022. He decided to take a break from his 15-year public relations career at that time.

Last July, he launched Inalife with the goal of achieving profitability in approximately two years.

Worley realized that his kids would only know him as their dad after his mother-in-law passed away. He wanted to ensure that he, his sons, and all family members were remembered in some way.

Users can pre-record messages for their loved ones that will be released at a specific time or milestone in the future.

If subscribers choose to upgrade the service, they can add more users or increase the storage space for their memories.

Folklory

Haresh Tilani and Terence Chia, long-time Singaporean friends and business partners, were motivated to start their personalized interviewing business due to the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Folklory offers an interviewing service where one of its experienced interviewers converses with the client's friends or loved ones, which can eventually be transformed into a high-quality podcast.

The business idea came almost accidentally.

"Tilani finished recording a podcast episode and thought it would be fun to ask her mom questions she never would have asked her, like what it's like to be 70. She said things Tilani had never heard her say before."

He discovered that his parents used to take him and his brother to an empty apartment when they were young, allowing the family to enjoy their own space. It was revealed that they had purchased their own apartment but were unable to live in it because they wanted to take care of his father's parents.

Those visits to the vacant apartment were brief breaks from the stress of caregiving.

""I didn't know much about my father until after his passing in 2013, and I regret not having anything that truly captures his personality," said the 40-year-old."

The unexpected conversation with his mother in late 2020 not only revealed a valuable piece of information about his father, but it also became a lifeline for their content business, which was disrupted by the pandemic and the collapse of a business partner.

Tilani and Chia's business faced financial difficulties after their video-on-demand streaming platform went bankrupt in March 2020, coinciding with the start of the pandemic.

Their realization that they needed to diversify their business prompted them to pivot into audio content.

Chia, who turns 42 later this year, revealed an Asian family loophole: we don't communicate with each other, but we will inform a third party of our love for our mother.

""People are more likely to share personal feelings with strangers when the context is right," Tilani pointed out."

Their business has grown to cater to corporate clients seeking to promote diversity and inclusion in their hybrid workplaces.

The duo has also started a community oral history project in Singapore, aiming to interview 60 senior Singaporeans before the city-state's 60th founding anniversary in 2025.

For Tilani, a part of Folklory will always remain personal.

""As you age, your parents grow older and you may lose a loved one, causing you to realize that people are not immortal, just like when I got married two years ago and my wife never got to meet my dad," Tilani said."

"If I could have a 30-minute conversation with my dad, she would get a full idea of who he is."