CareYaya, a platform that matches individuals who want caregivers with healthcare college students, is working to disrupt the caregiving business. The startup, which exhibited as a part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, is trying to improve reasonably priced in-home assist, whereas additionally serving to college students put together for his or her future healthcare careers.
The startup was based in 2022 by Neal Shah, who got here up with the concept for the startup based mostly on his personal expertise as a caregiver for his spouse after she turned sick with most cancers and numerous different illnesses. Throughout this time, Shah was a companion at a hedge fund and needed to wind down his fund to develop into a full-time caregiver for 2 years.
To get further take care of his spouse, Shah employed school college students who had been finding out healthcare to be caregivers for his spouse. Shah discovered that different households had been doing the identical factor informally by posting flyers at native campuses to seek out somebody who was certified to take care of their beloved one.
“I used to be like, wouldn’t it’s good to simply construct a proper system for them to do it, the place you don’t should go to your native nursing college or your native undergrad campus and publish flyers,” Shah instructed TechCrunch. “That is what I used to be doing. So we had been like, if you happen to can convey that into a proper capability via a tech platform, you can also make a big effect.”
Quick-forward to 2024, and the platform now has over 25,000 college students on its platform from quite a few faculties, together with Duke College, Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Jose State, College of Texas at Austin, and extra.
CareYaya performs background checks on college students who wish to be a part of the platform after which completes video-based interviews with them. On the person facet, folks can be a part of the platform after which element the kind of care their beloved one wants. CareYaya then matches college students to households, whether or not it’s for one-off periods or steady care. After the primary session, each events can go away rankings.
The startup says it could actually assist households save 1000’s of {dollars} on recurring senior care. Whereas at-home care prices a mean of $35 per hour within the U.S., CareYaya fees between $17 and $20 per hour.
For the reason that college students offering the care are tech savvy, CareYaya is equipping them with AI-powered know-how to acknowledge and observe illness development in sufferers with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The corporate not too long ago launched an LLM (massive language mannequin) that integrates with good glasses to assemble visible information to assist college students present higher real-time help and conduct early dementia screening.
When it comes to the longer term, CareYaya needs to discover increasing past the US, because the platform has seen curiosity from folks in locations like Canada, Australia, and the UK.
