Homage Raises Series B Funding Led by EV Growth

SINGAPORE – Homage, a leading on-demand caregiving services platform that combines qualified care professionals with smart technology, today announced that it has raised an undisclosed amount of Series B funding. The double-digit round was led by EV Growth, with new investors Alternate Ventures and KDV Capital also joining the round and participated by existing investor HealthXCapital.

Launched in 2017, Homage delivers personalised and holistic care to individuals, families, and organisations to enable wellness and recovery, be it at home, point-to-point (for medical tourism or escort and transportation), or care within the health and aged care facilities.

Through their platform, Homage individually interviews each care professional and screening them for aptitude, as well as softer skills including motivation and communication skills. The technology enables the company to streamline and scale the process, capturing the skills, experience, and motivation profile of each care professional, as well as use a proprietary matching engine that pairs care recipients, and organisations with the best-suited care professionals for their needs.

“Homage is about providing care wherever you are, for whatever you need, in a one-stop platform. As we’ve scaled out our core services, we see a strong need to build a strong network of fully curated, reliable and trusted care professionals to deliver a holistic range of health care services for our future, making long term health care more accessible and affordable,” said Gillian Tee, Co-founder and CEO of Homage.

Since its founding, the company has expanded rapidly. For instance, growing their B2B business more than 400% in 2019, and six-fold for their Malaysian operations since the beginning of the year. Homage also has established the largest fully screened pool of close to 2.000 qualified care professionals in South East Asia.

“In our next phase of growth, we look forward to partnering EV Growth to create more impact in our mission to provide deeper and more personalised support for our long-term care needs,” said Gillian.

With the fresh funds, Homage will focus on three key areas to scale the delivery of its care services. Firstly, Homage will invest in its core network of Care Professionals to improve their professional capabilities, along with launching holistic and personalized healthcare services empowered by its care provider, enterprise, and consumer mobile and web platforms.

Homage also plans to further invest in building out its medical services arm with a network of qualified doctors and medication delivery capabilities, in addition to deeper the investments of its core services in skilled nursing, assistance with daily living activities as well as rehabilitation care including physiotherapy, speech therapy, and occupational therapy.

Secondly, the company will also work to forge new partnerships with private and public sector stakeholders in its ecosystem to raise the accessibility and affordability of care and invest further into the enterprise technology platform.

Finally, Homage will expand further in the region to enable better accessibility, affordability, and reliability of services across Asia Pacific by expanding the quality and pool of care professionals but also and build the much needed long-term care infrastructure.

By 2050, the number of elderlies will exceed the number of children globally. In particular, Asia’s dramatically aging population will place an unprecedented demand for care and health services. Homage plans to be the solution to fill the gap of health worker shortages employing technology to deliver quality personalised care services, where the company will look to launch in five countries in the region within the next two years, including Indonesia.

“Increasing aging population and low TFR (total fertility rate) are inevitable. Urbanization and a fast-paced working environment make caregiving service become one of the key services in our daily life. Gillian and the team have been consistently trying to bring the on-demand caregiving service as accessible as possible, fast, and reliable. We are proud to be part of the Homage journey to bring back caregiving with control, grace, and dignity,” said Willson Cuaca, Managing Partner of EV Growth and co-founder of East Ventures.

Recently, EV Growth closed an additional US$50 million for its first fund, bringing the fund size to US$250 million. The achievement is the result of the firm’s admission of new Limited Partners (LPs), which include several Asian based family offices and two of Asia’s largest sovereign wealth funds, including Temasek. The firm plans to deploy US$325 million for South-east Asian startups by combining active funds size, for both seed and growth stage.

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About Homage

Homage is a personalized care solution that combines curated and trained care professionals with smart technology to manage and provide on-demand holistic home and community-based caregiving to seniors and adults, allowing them to age and recover at home with grace, control and dignity.

As a leading care services provider, Homage’s core services include Care Assessments, Activities of Daily Living (ADL) assistance, Home Nursing Procedures and Home Rehabilitation services, including Physiotherapy, Speech Therapy and Occupational Therapy, medical and medication delivery services.

Operating in Singapore and Malaysia, Homage works with care recipients with a range of mobility and medical conditions, including chronic and terminal illnesses such as Dementia, Stroke, Parkinson’s and cancer, helping them be more mobile and functional as well as providing social and personal care. Homage is a partner to government, health, financial and corporate organisations where it directly delivers healthcare services to their incumbent and beneficiaries, be it at home or at a care facility.

About EV Growth

EV Growth is a joint venture between East Ventures, SMDV, and YJ Capital that is focused on providing growth capital to startups in Indonesia and the rest of Southeast Asia with an agnostic industry focus. EV Growth has one of the largest networks of companies and partners in the region and has invested in more than 16 portfolio companies since its first close in April 2018.

EV Growth aims to bridge the gap in VC growth funding with the ultimate goal of creating a well-diversified portfolio of Southeast Asia early growth tech stage leaders. Leveraging Sinar Mas’ deep business knowledge and combined with East Ventures’ reputation as one of the leading VCs with the largest seed and Series A portfolios in the region as well as YJ Capital’s long experience in the Internet industry, EV Growth has unrivaled access and insight into upcoming trends and opportunities in the industry