Singapore-based home caregiver matching app company Homage today announced raising a Series A round of US$4.15 million co-led by Golden Gate Ventures and HealthXCapital, a health tech-centric venture capital fund.
Other investors that participated in the latest round include early-stage investment firm SeedPlus and angel investors Juha Pananaan (Co-founder, Nonstop Games), Lim Dershing and Huang Shao-Ning (co-founders of JobsCentral).
The firm previously raised $1.2 million in seed funding from 500 Startups, Golden Gate Ventures, and SeedPlus. It also closed a round of angel investment from Pananaan, Lim and Huang, among others, in 2016.
The latest injection of funds will go towards Homage’s expansion plans in the Asia Pacific region, forging stronger technology partnerships, and training the care professionals using the platform.
The app matches seniors in need of on-demand caregiving services with licensed practitioners, better known as “CarePros” within the platform, by optimising its selection based on qualifiers like illness, professional experience and location.
“As a tech platform in the caregiving industry, we have to solve many seemingly intractable challenges at the same time,” said Gillian Tee, co-founder and CEO, Homage.
The company has delivered more than 100,000 hours of caregiving services since it started, it noted in a statement.
“On one hand, we need to meet the demand for accessible and affordable home-based health care; on the other, we need to draw, inspire, and nurture a new generation of CarePros to the industry to provide quality, trusted care. This is why we couldn’t be more thrilled to have some of the best strategic partners in HealthXCapital and Golden Gate Ventures, who are as passionate as we are to build the next phase of Homage,” she added.
In Singapore, as of 2016, the typical average household size among resident households is 3.35, according to the Government of Singapore. Its relatively small average household size is also accompanied by a rapidly ageing population with the elderly to make up 50 per cent of Singapore’s population by 2050, and a declining birthrate of 1.24 births per woman as of 2015.
Additionally, a General Household Survey report in 2015 suggests that “the majority of married couples were dual-income couples (i.e., where both husband and wife worked)”, meaning that most families will not be able to adequately take care of the senior generation, whether ambulant or not.
The app was also lauded in Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speech in 2017, where he spoke about the advantages of using technology to help give ease of mind when it comes to the elderly.
Editor: Ben Jiang