As the rich world’s population continues to grow, healthcare is rapidly being digitized and “platformed” to meet the massive scale of change headed our way. I recently reported on how Sira raised $320 million in the UK to shift patient care to homes instead of overcrowded hospitals.
Now another startup aims to create an almost “gig-economy style” platform for people providing live-in care for the elderly, this time in Europe.
Marta, the European digital platform for direct care, says there are up to six intermediaries when people try to arrange such care for their elderly relatives, and four out of five placements fail. Marta’s solution is an AI-driven matching platform for caregivers in live-in spaces. I guess you could call it UpWork for direct care?
It has now raised a €6.6 million seed round led by Capnamic along with United Diamond Capital. Ithaca, GMPVC, SumUp Impact Fund, Verve Ventures and Angels also participated. Existing investors such as Christian Vollmann, Johannes Schabach, Laura Isnola, Dr. Stephen Zoller and Julian Stifel also participated.
The startup now plans to expand into European markets in Germany, Poland, Romania and Lithuania.
The market it is catering to is an 18 billion euro market in the DACH region alone.
In Germany alone, the market is vast, with more than 4 million people seeking home care and only 280,000 caregivers able to provide it.
Marta says the algorithm-based marketplace enables matches between care-seekers and caregivers, enhancing transparency and a more person-to-person experience.
“There are hundreds of examples of how elder care can go wrong, and it’s impossible to accurately predict human assignment success because it’s just so many data points. We saw how difficult it was to organize care with our grandparents. Aging is a normal process and shouldn’t be a big problem. “We believe we can use technology to help caregivers in a big way,” Marta founder Jan Hoffman said in a statement.
Martha’s founders, Philip Buhr and Hoffmann, started Martha in 1998. In 2020, they are faced with the problem of finding caregivers for their relatives.
“MARTHA has created a transparent marketplace that connects caregivers directly to families in need of care. A truly unique approach based on digitization at this point. We have been following MARTHA for the past months and have been impressed with the technology and traction the team has provided. Above all, we are excited about the team’s passion to solve a major societal problem.” We are,” Jörg Binnenbrucker, Capnamic’s founding partner, said in a statement.
