Homecare start-up raises $104m to fund international expansion
MELBOURNE: A homecare start-up has raised $104m (£53m) to fund its national rollout and international expansion.
Cera Care , which is backed by former Standard Chartered boss Peter Sands, uses technology to monitor patients’ conditions and match them to the most-appropriate carer. It also uses artificial intelligence to detect a problem with a patient before it develops into something more serious.
The latest funding round brings the total level of capital raised to date to $90m. The equity and debt finance was led byu KairosHQ, alongside investors including Yabeo, and Guinness Asset Management.
The company has been on an acquisition spree and most recently completed a deal for social care provider Mears Care.
Cera said that it will use its newfound funds to continue buying up more businesses and look to open in new markets, including Germany.
Co-founder and chief executive Dr Ben Maruthappu said its technology will be the difference between an older person spending “a week or a month in a hospital ward”.
“The investment marks an exciting milestone for us, demonstrating faith in our company’s ability to revolutionise the social care sector as we bring modern, digital-first services to families across the UK,” he said.
“We definitely want to be nationwide across the UK and we want to expand in Europe. We’ve had a long-term interest in Germany and it’s the right time for an expansion because we rolled out a new wave of tech last year and investing more in that.”
Dr Maruthappu said the company will continue to acquire homecare businesses to grow its footprint. He also said Cera’s tech could save the NHS millions of pounds per year.
Under the Cera Care system, carers visit patients at various points through the day and take readings. Those readings are then fed into a centralised database where abnormalities such as a higher than normal temperature can be detected.
Dr Matuthappu said the Cera algorithms were “93pc accurate” in detecting health deterioration and risks.
Cera targets the country’s growing elderly population and aims to provide care for loved ones so that they may stay in their own home for as long as possible.
The company launched three years ago and has grown to 2,000 employees across 20 offices in the UK. It claims to be able to provide same-day care at a “tenth of the cost of a nursing home”.
In 2018, Cera completed a £13m series A funding round that included the likes of Guinness Asset Management and Yabeo, which is also the lead investor in Germany’s largest care supply companies Pflegebox.
Social care companies have faced mounting financial challenges in recent years as public sector funding has been squeezed and workers have left the industry at a record rate, which has led to an inflationary effect on wages.
Cera Care’s other backers include Dame Carol Black, former chair of the Nuffield Trust, and one-time Care Quality Commission boss David Behan.
