CareYaya is a platform that matches people in need of care with medical students and is working to transform the care industry. The startup, which exhibited as part of TechCrunch Disrupt's Battlefield 200, aims to enhance affordable in-home support while also helping students prepare for future medical careers.
The startup was founded in 2022 by Neil Shah, who came up with the idea for the startup based on his own experience as a caregiver for his wife who suffered from cancer and various other illnesses. During this time, Shah was a partner in a hedge fund, but had to downsize the fund to become a full-time caregiver for two years.
To provide additional care for his wife, Shah hired a college student studying health care to be her caregiver. Shah learned that other families were doing the same informally, posting flyers on local campuses to find qualified caregivers for their loved ones.
“I thought, instead of having to go to the local nursing school or college campus and drop off flyers, why not just create a formal system for them to do that?” Shah said. told TechCrunch. “This is what I was doing. So we thought if we could bring it into a formal capacity through a technology platform, we could have a big impact.”
Fast forward to 2024, and the platform now has over 25,000 students on the platform from numerous schools including Duke University, Stanford University, University of California Berkeley, San Jose State University, University of Texas at Austin, and more .
Image credit: CareYaya
CareYaya completes a video-based interview after conducting a background check on students wishing to join the platform. On the user side, people can join the platform and detail the type of care their loved one needs. CareYaya then matches students and families, whether for a one-time session or ongoing care. After the first session, both parties can leave a rating.
The startup says it can save families thousands of dollars on regular elderly care. In the US, home care costs an average of $35 per hour, while CareYaya's rates range from $17 to $20 per hour.
Caregivers are tech-savvy, so CareYaya equips them with AI-powered technology to recognize and track the disease progression of Alzheimer's and dementia patients. The company recently launched an LLM (Large-Scale Language Model) that integrates with smart glasses to collect visual data, allowing students to provide better real-time assistance and conduct early dementia screening. .
In the future, CareYaya would also like to consider expanding outside the United States, as the platform has attracted interest from people in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and other countries.