Singapore Caregiving Platform Homage Hustles To Keep Up With Demand For Care As Asia Ages
As Asian populations get older, Homage CEO Gillian Tee is rising the digital platform’s pool of caregivers, nurses and docs to fulfill rising demand.
Gillian Tee was 10 when the aged nanny who helped elevate her handed away from most cancers. That have, and a detailed bond together with her grandmother, made Tee conscious of the day by day assist wanted by many seniors, and the wrestle households face find certified care. Over 20 years later she cofounded Singapore-based Homage, which as we speak claims to have the largest pool of caregivers within the city-state that households can rent by an app.
“I believe most individuals in healthcare startups begin within the business as a result of that they had some private experiences,” says the 40-year-old CEO by video. The pc science graduate (College of Melbourne) acquired her first style of working a enterprise after getting an M.B.A. from Columbia College. In 2012, she cofounded New York-based ticket reserving platform Rocketrip. A couple of years later she moved again to Singapore to be nearer to household, the place she noticed a possibility to marry digital expertise with home-based care providers. “I actually believed within the idea of doing effectively by doing good,” she says of her resolution to start out Homage with cofounders Lily Phang and Tong Duong, who’ve since left the corporate.
Forbes Asia
Since launching in 2016, Homage has grown to fifteen,000 part- and full-time caregivers, expanded to Malaysia and Australia, and raised greater than $45 million in funding from buyers together with Sheares Healthcare Group, owned by Singapore state fund Temasek, and Southeast Asia-focused Golden Gate Ventures.
The corporate’s transfer into Malaysia in 2018 helped increase income by 170% to S$1.8 million ($1.3 million) in 2020, whereas losses narrowed to S$4.8 million from S$5.8 million, in keeping with the newest out there figures. Tee says gross sales greater than tripled final 12 months and worldwide revenues grew eightfold prior to now 18 months, following the corporate’s enlargement into Australia in 2021.
Homage, which made the 100 to Watch listing this 12 months, has additionally diversified past caregiving to incorporate providers resembling telemedicine, drugs supply and the sale of medical merchandise. Tee is now targeted on tackling the problem of maintaining with demand for care as Asia ages. In Singapore, authorities figures present the variety of individuals aged 65 or over made up nearly 17% of its resident inhabitants in 2022.
Demand for expert caregivers is rising steadily not simply in Singapore, however throughout the Asia-Pacific, dwelling to a number of the world’s oldest and quickest getting old populations. Within the subsequent decade, the area will account for 60% of the world’s over-65 inhabitants and also will have 250 million diabetics, in keeping with Vikram Kapur, accomplice and head of Asia-Pacific healthcare at consultancy Bain in Singapore. “Healthcare on this a part of the world is absolutely at a tipping level,” Kapur says.
Its app can join individuals with docs for a digital session inside half-hour. As for its house-call providers, Homage says it could ship a physician inside a day and a caregiver inside two days.
Courtesy of Homage
In Singapore and Malaysia—the place the aged are primarily cared for by relations, live-in home assist, or attendants in nursing houses or these contracted from brick-and-mortar companies—Homage’s digital platform offers a distinct segment decentralized service in an more and more tech-savvy area. A report this 12 months by Bain discovered extra individuals in Southeast Asia started utilizing digital healthcare instruments due to restricted entry to in-person appointments in the course of the pandemic. As with on-line meals supply and fintech, many proceed to make use of digital healthcare due to its comfort, the report added. “Client expectations are altering loads,” says Kapur. “For meals supply and different providers, you get nearly quick entry. However there’s frustration with healthcare.”
Homage is attempting to unravel that drawback by enabling households to rent part- and full-time caregivers for intervals starting from one hour to versatile pay as you go packages of as much as 200 hours that it provides at printed charges. Its app has over 15,000 downloads on the Google Play retailer and the corporate claims to have supplied greater than 1 million hours of service to prospects. In contrast with Singapore’s Physician Anyplace—a preferred telemedicine app with over 1,000,000 downloads in Southeast Asia that guarantees video session with a physician in below 5 minutes—Homage says it could organize such digital appointments inside half-hour, plus home calls inside a day. It sends caregivers inside two days.
“Throughout the pandemic, we discovered that many stroke sufferers required telemedicine providers,” says Tee. “So, we now have [telemedicine], which is an ancillary as a result of it provides to the well-being of sufferers.” Homage’s transfer into promoting medical and healthcare merchandise resembling blood strain displays is supposed to additionally serve a necessity. “We are going to all the time focus [on] the care recipient,” she says. “For instance, what does a stroke affected person want? We are going to all the time have a look at what could be a higher resolution for the affected person.”
“I actually believed within the idea of doing effectively by doing good.”
Tee’s additionally been busy elevating capital. There was an undisclosed “double-digit” sequence B spherical in January 2020, led by EV Progress, a three way partnership between Southeast Asia-focused East Ventures, YJ Capital (a subsidiary of SoftBank-backed Z Holdings, now a part of its company enterprise capital arm Z Enterprise Capital) and SMDV, backed by the billionaire Widjaja household’s Sinar Mas conglomerate in Indonesia. That adopted a $4.15 million sequence A funding in 2018, led by Golden Gate Ventures and HealthXCapital.
In September final 12 months, the corporate accomplished a $30 million sequence C spherical, led by Temasek’s Sheares Healthcare, which invests in and offers healthcare providers in Asia. Homage says the funds can be used to scale up its platform and double down on its abroad operations in Malaysia and Australia, that are its key development drivers. Nevertheless, Homage could also be hitting velocity bumps. In late October, a spokesperson for Homage stated the corporate “is making a couple of key strategic modifications in response to the macro setting,” later including these modifications are in relation to its Australian enlargement plans. When requested to make clear, the spokesperson didn’t reply.
To maintain Homage on a development trajectory, Tee should overcome recent challenges of an unsure financial setting and recruiting healthcare professionals quick sufficient from a dwindling expertise pool. “We’re not doubling nursing colleges yearly,” she says. “So [supply] is linear, however the demand is rising exponentially due to the getting old inhabitants.”
Courtesy of Homage
The scarcity of caregivers for the aged is especially acute in Australia, Homage’s latest market. “The pandemic has escalated burnout and diminished retention charges,” says Sharon Hakkennes, vice chairman analyst at Gartner’s healthcare apply. “Clinicians are leaving the career.” Australia’s aged care sector may face a scarcity of not less than 110,000 staff within the subsequent decade, in keeping with a 2021 report by the Committee for Financial Improvement of Australia, a nonprofit group.
Hakkennes says digital applied sciences resembling Homage’s platform may help alleviate the scarcity by permitting healthcare professionals to entry and deal with sufferers extra effectively. “[Digital technology] goes to allow scale,” she says. “And after we’re combating the medical workforce, that’s going to be essential.” Apart from enabling aged care amenities to faucet right into a “vetted pool of licensed care professionals,” Homage claims on its Australian web site that its platform allows customers from numerous backgrounds to entry caregivers who can converse 93 languages, together with signal language.
In the meantime, Tee is doing all she will be able to to incentivize healthcare professionals to hitch her firm’s platform. In March 2020, Homage partnered with Singapore-based insurance coverage expertise firm Gigacover to supply healthcare advantages to all its healthcare professionals and their dependents. A month later, Homage launched a fund to supply them with monetary help in the course of the peak of the pandemic. “Our care professionals are our predominant purchasers—they’re our care recipients, if you wish to put it that method,” says Tee. “We must always handle them. Why? In order that they’ll handle different individuals.”
