Singapore’s home-based caregiving startup Homage has raised a “double-digit” round of Series B funding led by EV Growth, the company said in a statement.
Participating in the round are new investors Alternate Ventures and KDV, as well as existing backer HealthXCapital, who joined the company’s Series A funding round in July 2018.
Launched in 2017, Homage delivers personalised care to individuals, families, and organisations to enable wellness and recovery, be it at home, point-to-point (for medical tourism or escort and transportation), or care within health and aged care facilities.
It looks to serve the increasing number of the elderly population, which by 2050 is predicted to exceed the number of children globally, placing an unprecedented demand for such services.
Through its platform, Homage interviews each care professional, screening them on aptitude and soft skills. The technology enables the company to streamline and scale the process, capturing the skills, experience, and motivation profile of each care professional.
Since its founding, Homage claims that its B2B business has grown more than 400 per cent in 2019, while its Malaysia operation has grown six-fold since the beginning of the year.
Homage, which plans to launch in five countries in Southeast Asia within the next two years, also claims to have the largest fully screened pool of close to 2,000 qualified care professionals in the region.
“In our next phase of growth, we look forward to partnering EV Growth to create more impact in our mission to provide deeper and more personalized support for our long-term care needs,” said Homage co-founder and CEO Gillian Tee.
Homage will invest in its core network of care professionals to improve their capabilities while also building out its medical services arm with a network of qualified doctors and medication delivery capabilities.
The company will forge new partnerships with private and public sector stakeholders and invest further in the enterprise technology platform as it expands further in the Asia-Pacific region.
“Increasing aging population and low TFR (total fertility rate) are inevitable. Urbanization and a fast-paced working environment make caregiving service become one of the key services in our daily life,” said Managing Partner of EV Growth and co-founder of East Ventures, Willson Cuaca.
The funding in Homage marks the first investment by EV Growth following the close of an additional $50 million for its first fund, which brought its total fund size to $250 million.
The firm, which is a joint venture between Sinar Mas, East Ventures, and Yahoo! Japan, announced a final close of the fund at $200 million in May. However, it reopened the fund a few months later due to the continued interest in the vehicle from potential limited partners, or investors.
Some of the fund’s recent investments include Indonesian edutech Ruangguru, beauty-tech Sociolla, regional cashback startup Shopback, Vietnamese e-commerce Sendo, Indonesian SME lender Koinworks, micro-retail tech startup Warung Pintar, mobile point-of-sale startup MokaPOS, co-working space provider CoHive, and on-demand warehouse startup Waresix.
