Homage raises US$4.15mil in Series A funding

  • Round was co-led by Golden Gate Ventures and HealthXCapital
  • Funds will be used to enhance professional training and development for Care Professionals

 

Homage raises US$4.15mil in Series A funding

 

HOMAGE, a company providing smart technology home-based care services, on July 3 announced a successful fundraise of US$4.15 million (RM58.44 million). The Series A round was co-led by investors Golden Gate Ventures and HealthXCapital, South and Southeast Asia’s first healthtech venture capital fund.

Other investors included SeedPlus, Juha Pananaan, Lim Dershing and Huang Shao-ning, who were also investors in the seed round of US$1.2 million (RM4.83 million) raised last year in March.

Singapore, like many developed countries in Asia, is facing myriad challenges caring for a rapidly ageing population. According to Population.sg, Singapore has about 4.7 citizens of working age (20 – 64) in 2016 for every one older adult (65 and above).

This is a significant decline from 10 years ago where Singapore had 6.9 citizens per older adult. By 2030, Singapore is expected to have only 2.3 citizens of working age per older adult.

Homage provides licensed practitioners a platform through which they can render services on an on-demand basis, providing them with greater flexibility to care for multiple families.

Families will be able to rely on Homage to ensure their senior family members are properly cared for by licensed practitioners.

But it’s Homage’s reliance on technology that will help enlarge the pool of care professionals and scale existing personalised care services to match rapidly rising needs.

Through a smart matching system, Homage can select the most optimal caregivers based on factors such as illness, professional experience, and geography; create more robust databases of patient-generated healthcare data; and provide deeper, better insights for care operators, hospitals and medical service providers.

“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 of Homage.

“On one hand, we need to meet the demand for accessible and affordable home-based healthcare; 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.”

The new funds will be directed toward enhancing the professional training and development programmes for Care Professionals (CarePros) as well as deepening support for Homage’s partner network, as the company looks to support and expand their partners’ care capabilities.

Additionally, Homage will continue to build on the technology and smart matching features at the heart of Homage’s offering, as the company launches from its Singapore home base to grow in new markets in Asia.

Seemant Jauhari, managing partner of HealthXCapital, said, “HealthXCapital is focused on investing in and helping build the next wave of healthcare and health-tech companies focused on emerging Asia and bold enough to take intricate challenges head on. We’re impressed by Gillian and her team, and we are confident that they can lead the charge to effectively address ageing and ageing-related challenges leveraging technology, tackling one of the biggest human needs expected in the years to come.”

Justin Hall, partner at Golden Gate Ventures, who praised Homage’s progress to date, saying, “Homage is rapidly becoming one of the most crucial and significant technology platforms in Asia. Homage’s fresh approach to caregiving blends both high-touch and high-tech, fundamentally redefining the way healthcare is administered and distributed. I'm honoured to help Homage grow into a leading care platform in the world.”

 

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