They wanted to use the hearing aids feature that Apple recently released but it is not available in India. They found a way to get around the geo restrictions and enable it.

Rithwik Jayasimha immediately went out with his dad to buy a pair for his grandma. “We came back home, we took them out of the case, and I was looking for the feature and it was just missing,”

I believe AirPods are the only earphones with a hearing aid feature so far, and because of how expensive hearing aids are, they are probably the cheapest.

The AirPods are probably much cheaper than regular hearing aids. My parent’s hearing aids cost a couple thousand and they have to replace batteries.