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 thought for the startup based mostly on his personal expertise as a caregiver for his spouse after she grew to become in poor health with most cancers and varied different illnesses. Throughout this time, Shah was a associate at a hedge fund and needed to wind down his fund to grow to be a full-time caregiver for 2 years.
To get further take care of his spouse, Shah employed school college students who have been learning healthcare to be caregivers for his spouse. Shah discovered that different households have been doing the identical factor informally by posting flyers at native campuses to seek out somebody who was certified to take care of their cherished one.
“I was like, wouldn’t it be nice to just build a formal system for them to do it, where you don’t have to go to your local nursing school or your local undergrad campus and post flyers,” Shah informed TechCrunch. “This is what I was doing. So we were like, if you can bring that into a formal capacity through a tech platform, you can make a big impact.”
Quick-forward to 2024, and the platform now has over 25,000 college students on its platform from quite a few colleges, 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 need to be part of the platform after which completes video-based interviews with them. On the person facet, folks can be part of the platform after which element the kind of care their cherished one wants. CareYaya then matches college students to households, whether or not it’s for one-off classes or steady care. After the primary session, each events can depart rankings.
The startup says it may possibly assist households save hundreds of {dollars} on recurring senior care. Whereas at-home care prices a median of $35 per hour within the U.S., CareYaya expenses between $17 and $20 per hour.
Because the 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 just lately launched an LLM (massive language mannequin) that integrates with sensible 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.
