Isolation from the pandemic has been especially hard on older adults, many that are in need of some form of support (both large and small) for activities of daily living. Over the last decade, a record portion of the population has been turning 65 each year in the UK, fueled by baby boomers. The combination of these two factors has made home health care a pillar of the healthcare system to support the needs of the elderly population and their families. Lifted is a comprehensive home care management platform that makes it easy for families to access, use, plan for, and manage their home care needs. The home care industry is extremely fragmented and navigating the landscape can be difficult to find trusted providers. Lifted brings transparent, and reliable experience to the process with its own dedicated staff (other providers rely on contract workers), digital-first experience, and resources.
London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Rachael Crook to learn more about how her experience caring for her mother inspired the company, the state of the industry, strategic plans, latest round of funding, and much, much more.
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
Lifted has raised $6.2Min a Series A funding round led by Fuel Ventures. This latest round takes the total raised by Lifted to $11.2M. 1818 Venture Capital also increased their investment and were joined by new investors Perivoli Innovations, the J.B. Ugland family office, Kluz Ventures through its new health affiliated fund Novit Ventures, VOYAGERS HealthTech fund, and a number of Angels.
Tell us about your product or service.
We provide care to people at home. We directly employ our staff and we are proud to pay the London living wage for visiting care.
Lifted aims to create the digital brand for the caring generation. Using our bespoke Care Management Platform, we provide a seamless and joyful care experience that increases peace of mind for families and improves working conditions for Carers. We care for people living with long-term health conditions or needing more support as they get older in their own homes, offering visiting care in London and live-in care across the country.
Our platform is unique in supporting families across the full care journey, providing free care advice for families, and gamifying the experience for Carers to enable loved ones to stay in their own homes for longer. We’re pleased to say that in the past year, we’ve already cut Carer churn to half the industry average, and secured only 5-star reviews on Trustpilot.
What inspired the start of Lifted?
I was 24 when my mum, just 56 at the time, was diagnosed with early-onset dementia. My life changed forever from that point, and for the next six years, we struggled to keep my mum at home.
Navigating the care system was a very isolating experience, particularly as a young person, and there was nowhere we could turn for community or support. When we needed care, it could be unreliable, and impossible to keep up with. It became clear to me very quickly that the care sector was in desperate need of change, and that technology could help to revolutionise home care for families, loved ones, and for hard-working Carers themselves.
The need for a solution is huge: the demand for home care will double in the next 15 years, while the number of older people living alone will increase by 50%. The market is so fragmented that there are 11,000 home care companies, yet none have more than 3% of market share. And the alternatives are unpopular: The number of beds per person in care homes declined 10% in 2019, and care homes have only become less popular during the pandemic.
There was an opportunity to build a business of unprecedented commercial and social value. That was where the idea was born, and a few years later, I joined up with my cofounder Sam Cohen and a venture builder called Zero One to launch Lifted. Since then, we’ve been on a mission to fix the tech care crisis and lift lives by revolutionising home care.
How is it different?
We believe that no one should care alone, so Lifted is unique in offering a helping hand to families across the full care journey, including everything from providing free care advice for families to gamifying the experience for Carers to enable loved ones to stay in their own homes for longer.
We also use our platform to create joy and simplicity in the care experience. We give families full transparency and we suggest ways for our Carers to engage with clients and collect these “Lifted moments” to share with families. We believe that care should bring you joy even in the thought of times. We are the only company to allow you to start arranging care through an app.
As part of this, supporting and increasing a sense of community for families and Carers is central to everything we do. We recently acquired Live Better With Dementia and launched the Lifted Dementia Hub to make this a reality. Here we provide everything families need to support loved ones living with dementia. It includes over 1000 expert articles, an online support group, and a new marketplace of products specifically designed to support people living with dementia. Since launching the Hub, we have seen unprecedented demand for support, and we are looking forward to adding expert events and further products to support more people and expanding to other conditions.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We are targeting the care market. It is worth £12B in the UK alone today and it is set to double in the next 15 years. We know that home is where people want to be and we determined to make that a reality for everyone.
In addition, we are targeting the B2B employers market helping employers to support their staff with caring responsibilities. And through our online dementia community, we are tackling the enormous market to support people living with dementia with the products and services they need to live well with a long-term health condition.
What’s your business model?
We provide care to people at home and we charge an hourly price for visiting care and a weekly price for live-in care. We are really excited for this recent round to power our growth into new markets and new locations. We will expand the business across England, before targeting international expansion.
We are also excited to launch our B2B proposition to work with employers nationwide seeking to support their staff with caring responsibilities. With 600 people in the UK leaving their jobs every day to care for loved ones, and women twice as likely as men to make this choice, it is a priority to those seeking to attract and retain diverse talent.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business??
In the past year during the pandemic, the number of people caring for adult loved ones has increased exponentially with almost 1 in 2 people supporting people outside their household. With care homes increasingly unpopular and the Government yet to put forward a long-term plan for social care, there is a huge commercial opportunity and social need that Lifted is seeking to address.
For Lifted it has certainly been challenging. Our Clients are among those most vulnerable to the pandemic so keeping them safe has been our number one priority. This meant getting personal protective equipment to all our staff every week. My Co-founder even exchanged face masks for meatballs when a local hospital gave us their spare supply!
We also moved the business to be completely remote, including training our staff, while tripling the team. We worked hard to retain the trust of families who were scared about receiving care and I’m so proud of our team who have worked extraordinarily hard to make this happen.
What was the funding process like?
I really enjoyed it. We spent a lot of time thinking about our goals and how we wanted to position ourselves. Then we looked at the data to understand our strengths and weaknesses, and finally at our financial model so that we knew the numbers inside out.
We tested the deck and the pitch on a number of people and took feedback. Then we had a very clear process for managing the pipeline of people we were selling to and we were off. I had about 5 meetings a day some days and then due diligence questions at night to answer. We also completed our acquisition at the same time so it was very intense.
I really enjoyed it though as I love talking to people about Lifted. Investors are very smart and experienced people who ask tough but good questions that have made our business stronger. I tried to make sure I followed up with everyone quickly and moved the process forward rapidly. It also really helped that I have a great cofounder and a great team that could run the business while I stepped back to work on the raise.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
It was challenging to make firm plans in the context of a pandemic particularly regarding future expansion which, of course, investors are really passionate about.
It was also hard to juggle completing our acquisition and the fundraise at the same time. Like every business, we were asked tough questions about our unit economics and about our growth strategy which had been affected by the pandemic. Raising capital is partly about inspiring investors with the future potential and also being credible set against today’s results, so striking that balance is always challenging.
It was also hard to juggle completing our acquisition and the fundraise at the same time. Like every business, we were asked tough questions about our unit economics and about our growth strategy which had been affected by the pandemic. Raising capital is partly about inspiring investors with the future potential and also being credible set against today’s results, so striking that balance is always challenging.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
They were inspired by the size of the market and by the social mission we are seeking to achieve. The opportunity to build a business of unprecedented financial and social value was very attractive to them.
They were excited by the growth we had delivered in the last year and they were very positive about the way we had steered the team through the pandemic without dropping quality.
They found our vision of building the digital brand for the caring generation highly compelling and particularly our ability to build long-term high-value relationships with families and support them throughout the care journey.
They were very complimentary about our brilliant team, felt that we had both a strong vision and a realistic sense of the challenge and that we were open to feedback.
Where do you see the company going now over the near term?
We will use our latest funding to grow the world’s first one-stop-shop for everything needed to find and maintain care for a loved one, starting with those living with dementia. This means building the first App led care experience for families and developing our data-led gamification tools for Carers to boost engagement and retention.
We will also utilise the funding to scale the business across the country and work with employers looking for support for their employees with caring responsibilities.
What advice can you offer companies in London that do not have a fresh injection of capital in the bank?
Raising capital is a means to an end. Having a clear plan that you believe in is what matters and for some people raising money is the right answer, while for others it certainly isn’t. Focus on really understanding how to solve your customer’s problems in a way that can create a sustainable business. Reach out and ask others for help, most people love to be asked. Make the business a little better every day and feel proud of what you are building.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
I love to get the boat from Westminster to Greenwich. I love seeing all the different areas of London and how the buildings have evolved over time. It’s the closest thing to being on holiday that I’ve found in London. And at the other end, there is the brilliant Maritime Museum and Greenwich market.
