Business Remedies | Shruti Kothari | Weekends are when life slows down just enough for us to reconnect with ourselves and with our families. It is the time for catching up over long calls, flipping through old photo albums, or recreating grandma’s signature dish. Embracing this spirit of togetherness, one startup is transforming how we cherish our roots. FamTree is a mobile-first platform helping families trace their lineage, share memories, and preserve stories in a way that feels as warm and personal as a weekend spent at home.
In a recent conversation with Mihail Touretskiy from Dubai, co-founder of the FamTree application, it became clear that the future of tech isn’t just about speed and scale. It is also about connection.
Meet FamTree, a mobile-first platform designed not just to record your family lineage but to experience it. At the heart of this innovation is Mihail and his diverse team spread across India, Russia, Dubai and Singapore. They are visionaries bound by a shared desire to preserve the warmth of family connections in a digital shell.
The journey began in 2022 with the creation of FamilySpace, an app aimed at solving a surprisingly overlooked problem: family collaboration. “Businesses have countless tools to collaborate, but families? They rely on scattered calls, WhatsApp messages or memory. We wanted to fix that,” Mihail explains.
FamilySpace became a digital living room equipped with a shared calendar for birthdays and school events, a recipe archive and a memory bank. But the breakout star was the family tree feature. It quickly outgrew its shell, prompting the team to develop FamTree as a standalone product in late 2024.
A tree with deep roots
FamTree is not your typical genealogy tracker. Yes, it records names and dates, but it also records stories, uploads recipes, and even supports multiple cultural structures.
What truly sets FamTree apart is its cultural sensitivity and cross-generational accessibility. Built as mobile-first, not a desktop compromise, it is optimized for low data usage in rural areas and includes functionality for regional language translation.
FamTree empowers users to build, edit, and organize their own private family trees, ensuring control over accuracy and detail. The app stands out by allowing users to enrich their trees with photos, documents, and personal stories, creating a vivid, lasting family album that goes beyond names and dates. This approach is especially valuable for families wishing to preserve unique cultural legacies, oral histories, and treasured memories that might otherwise be lost.
Additionally, FamTree offers integration with other family tree maker tools, making it easier to keep records updated and accessible across devices. By focusing on ease of use and the ability to personalize and share family heritage, FamTree fills the gap for those who want a secure, organized, and meaningful way to document and celebrate their ancestral legacies
Building a bridge, not just a database
Mihail notes a compelling insight. “It’s the middle-aged who are most active users. They’re the custodians of family memory. But we’re designing for the future, for when the kids grow up and want to know who their great-grandmother really was, what dish she cooked, or what her voice sounded like.”
Recipes, it turns out, are a surprise hero on the app. Elders often upload traditional dishes using a fill-in form that supports pictures, ingredients and instructions, sometimes in local dialects. “Each recipe becomes a legacy,” Mihail says with pride.
Challenges, surprises and the AI companion
Despite growing to over 10,000 users, the journey hasn’t been without bumps. The most frequent request is video calls. The team is currently in talks with third-party providers to integrate that without bloating the app or increasing user costs. “It’s expensive to build natively, but partnerships may be the way forward,” Mihail reveals.
Another experiment is AI integration, not as a gimmick but as a participant. “An AI agent joins your family chat. You can ask it questions, just like another family member.” Powered by ChatGPT, this feature offers context-aware assistance, whether helping clarify family history or simplifying tech hurdles for elderly users.
The business of memory
FamTree runs on a freemium model, free for initial use, followed by tiered subscriptions. Funding so far has come from “friends and family,” but the vision is big. “Memory tech is an emerging niche. We’re just scratching the surface.”
India, Mihail believes, is the ideal launchpad. “Every job post we put out receives thousands of passionate applications. There’s immense talent here,” he says. Contrary to the old narrative of brain drain, he sees a wave of reverse migration. Entrepreneurs are returning to India, particularly Bengaluru, to build on the country’s startup momentum.
Doing business with India: Exciting, but not without challenges
When asked about how India fares in terms of international business relationships, Mihail pointed to the growing significance of Dubai as a hub for Indian entrepreneurs.
However, he also flagged a challenge. Upon being asked about the difficulties international businesses face while doing business with India, Mihail pointed to India’s currency control regulations. “There are heavy restrictions on currency movement, lots of reporting requirements, and cross-border transactions are tightly regulated. It becomes complex for international players to operate smoothly in and out of India,” he added.
In the end, it’s about stories
At its core, FamTree isn’t a tech product. It is a storytelling tool wrapped in code. It gives families a place to write their histories while they’re still being lived. In an era where disconnection is just a swipe away, Mihail and his team are quietly planting roots, one family at a time.
Written & Edited By:
Shruti Kothari
