Individuals across the U.S. are challenged every day with the task of taking care of a loved one full-time while also managing a career, children, pets and more. In fact, caregiver support is often overlooked in American healthcare, despite over 90 percent of care occurring in the home and not the hospital, according to a local startups’ website.
That’s where Boston-based ianacare comes in. The startup aims to provide caregiver support to individuals and employees by partnering with employers and health plans. The tech-enabled caregiver support platform provides resources and help for those who seek it, and it just raised capital to grow.
“We are creating a true infrastructure of care in the home,” Steven Lee, co-founder and COO of ianacare, said in a statement. “Caregivers are the invisible backbone of the healthcare system, and by shining a light on their role and providing the support they need and deserve, ianacare is fundamentally improving the healthcare system. Thousands of resources and services for caregivers already exist, but they are highly fragmented and difficult to find. The power of our technology allows us to bring large systems together, enable simpler connection and coordination and deliver highly personalized experiences at scale.”
Co-founders Lee and Jessica Kim developed the ianacare platform in 2018 after Kim worked for seven years as a full-time caregiver for her mother who was battling cancer. The company’s app and plaform is free to use and available nationwide even if an employer does not partner with ianacare. The app’s personal social circles feature allows families and friends to collaborate on the scheduling of several duties including housework, pet care, providing respite care and more.
Ianacare announced Tuesday it raised a $12.1 million Series A funding round led by Greycroft with participation from Able Partners, SemperVirensVC, 8VC and Brown Alumni Group. The latest funding round brings ianacare’s total funding raised to $16.7 million, according to the company.
“With this funding, ianacare will continue to build the most comprehensive, tech-enabled platform to support caregivers,” Kim, co-founder and CEO of ianacare, said in a statement. “We are launching with some of the nation’s largest employers and are on track to cover 1 million lives. We’ll be building out our team and infrastructure to support this growth.”
The funding will allow ianacare to grow its seven-person team to 25 over the next year, a company spokesperson told Built In via email.
Currently, its enterprise solution — which launched in March — covers more than 400,000 lives through existing partnerships with employers and insurance companies, according to TechCrunch.
“Caregivers in this country are in crisis,” Kim said in a statement. “Labor shortages and Covid are compounding an issue that was already growing pre-pandemic. Solutions that fundamentally change caregiving must be tech-enabled and must be able to scale as our ranks of unpaid family caregivers grows.”
