Lifted raises £1.6 million from Fuel Ventures to solve home care crisis

London-based Lifted has raised £1.6 million to transform home care in a Seed round led by Fuel Ventures.

Alongside Fuel Ventures, Vitry Enfants Ltd, and Marc Cohen, Chief Co-Investment Officer of 1818 Venture Capital also participated. This investment takes the total raised by Lifted to £3.1 million, since Lifted was first incubated by British Gas and venture builder Zero 1.

The tragic impact of Covid-19 on care homes has made many of us anxious about care for loved ones. Spiralling demand has made the need for alternatives stark. Lifted is created to put people back in control of their care options so they can stay in their own homes for longer.

Rachael Crook, Lifted CEO and Co-Founder, said: “As the current pandemic has made clear, care is in crisis. At Lifted we are on a mission to fix it.”

Lifted uniquely combines higher employment standards and industry leading technology to offer better, personalised care that empowers individuals, families, and Carers.

Rachael Crook co-founded Lifted with Sam Cohen after experiencing first-hand how stressful and isolating navigating the care sector can be when, at the age of 24, her own mother was diagnosed with dementia at 56.

Through its Care Management Platform, Lifted:

  • Restores joy to families by helping them be better connected to loved ones and their Carers
  • Offers vital insights into client wellbeing to help Carers feel better supported and informed
  • Provides 24/7 support and training to Carers and families
The new funding will be used to extend these services further to develop a one-stop-shop to support anyone through the process of caring for a loved one. This will include tools to engage and personalise care, guidance and advice for families, a Platform to up-skill and recognise care workers remotely and building out its AI capabilities to provide automated coaching and assisted decision-making.

 

Lifted team photo

 

Lifted’s Care Management Platform centralises data from all parts of the care ecosystem, enabling AI assisted decision-making for Carers and automated scheduling and alerting for operations teams. Information is shared in real time making it easier, quicker, and safer to arrange care, giving families immediate insight into their loved one’s health, and delivering peace of mind.

Rachael Crook, CEO and Co-Founder of Lifted said: “We are proud of the success we have seen in just over a year. We have excellent customer reviews, provide award winning care, a fast-growing business, and we’re doing it in a way that benefits everyone. In short, we are proving that responsible tech can help to solve some of the problems in our healthcare system thought intractable. Now the aim is to develop our Platform to bring more joy to families, quickly scale the business and build on the data-driven capabilities of our Platform which this funding will enable us to do.”

Unlike other start up players which merely connect unregulated Carers to families and do not train or support Carers, Lifted supports the entire care journey, directly employing Carers and provides 24/7 support. Lifted is one less than 2% of the 10,000 home care companies that pay the London Living Wage to Carers.

Mark Pearson, Founder and Managing Partner of Fuel Ventures said: “We’re incredibly excited to be leading this latest round of investment. We’ve seen several propositions that are looking to innovate the care sector, but Lifted really impressed us. Lifted’s approach of employing carers, paying a living wage and empowering them to do their work through software is why they will continue to grow quickly. The care sector is highly fragmented and both carers and patients are very dispersed, so creating a solution that works for both sides is incredibly important if we’re going to create real change.”