CareYaya, a platform that matches individuals who want caregivers with healthcare college students, is working to disrupt the caregiving trade. The startup, which exhibited as a part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, is trying to improve inexpensive 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 primarily based on his personal expertise as a caregiver for his spouse after she grew to become ailing 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 faculty college students who had been learning healthcare to be caregivers for his spouse. Shah realized 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 liked 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 instructed 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 a part of the platform after which completes video-based interviews with them. On the person aspect, individuals can be a part of the platform after which element the kind of care their liked 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 scores.
The startup says it could possibly assist households save 1000’s 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.
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 lately launched an LLM (giant 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 desires to discover increasing past the US, because the platform has seen curiosity from individuals in locations like Canada, Australia, and the UK.
