careyaya, a platform that connects people in need of caregivers with healthcare students, is working to revolutionize the caregiving industry. The startup, which was showcased as part of Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, seeks to improve affordable in-home support while helping students prepare for their future careers in healthcare.
The startup was founded in 2022 by Neal Shah, who came up with the idea based on his own experience as a caregiver for his wife after she fell ill with cancer and various other ailments. During this time, Shah was a partner in a hedge fund and had to close his fund to become a full-time caregiver for two years.
To obtain additional care for his wife, Shah hired college students studying healthcare to care for his wife. Shah learned that other families were casually doing the same thing by posting flyers on lugar campuses to find someone who was qualified to care for their loved one.
“I thought, 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 lugar nursing school or your lugar college campus and post flyers?” Shah told TechCrunch. “This is what I was doing. “So we thought, if you can bring that to a formal capacity through a technology platform, you can have a big impact.”
Fast forward to 2024, and the platform now has more than 25,000 students from numerous schools, including Duke University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Jose State, the University of Texas at Austin, and more.
CareYaya conducts background checks on students who wish to join the platform and then completes video interviews with them. On the user side, people can join the platform and then detail the type of care their loved one needs. CareYaya then matches students with their families, either for one-time sessions or ongoing care. After the first session, both parties can leave feedback.
The startup says it can help families save thousands of dollars on recurring senior care. While home care costs an promedio of $35 per hour in the US, CareYaya charges between $17 and $20 per hour.
Since the students providing care are tech-savvy, CareYaya is equipping them with AI-powered technology to recognize and track disease progression in Alzheimer's and dementia patients. The company recently launched an LLM (large language model) that integrates with smart glasses to collect visual data to help students provide better current-time assistance and perform early dementia testing.
In terms of the future, CareYaya wants to explore expansion beyond the United States, as the platform has piqued interest from people in places like Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
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