Kindly Care Raises $5.4M For Home Care Marketplace

Eldercare marketplace Kindly Care has raised $5.4 million in a Series A round led by Javelin Venture Partners. Other participants in the round include MHS Capital and Jackson Square Ventures.

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Kindly Care’s platform connects care givers to those who are searching for help with a loved one. Through its online platform, on which more than 120,000 caregivers are currently registered, families can choose and interview professionals before meeting in person.

“In the same way that Care.com is potentially a better version of Craigslist, we like to think of ourselves as the better version and better alternative to Care.com,” Founder and CEO of Kindly Care Igor Lebovic told Crunchbase News in an interview.

Kindly Care vets the professionals on its platform with pre-screenings and background checks.

“You have to have worked in [the caregiving] field before, and if you have worked in this field before you have to be able to show proof of employment and training,” Lebovic explained.

After completing a background check, caregivers are required to take an aptitude test which assesses their experience and knowledge in specific aspects of the caregiving profession. While Kindly Care doesn’t reject individuals from joining the platform, it does rate individuals based on the information provided, their background checks, and their aptitude tests. The final decision is left with the families that have interviewed and selected a caregiver.

Lebovic specified that Kindly Care is not, however, a home care agency, which is more hands-on and in control of the vetting, selection, and employment of caregiver.

“When you work with a marketplace in-home care, it’s very much a self-serve system,” Lebovic said, adding that with marketplaces like Kindly Care, the interview, final selection, and wage negotiation responsibilities lie with the families employing the caregiver. However, once the selection process takes place, Kindly Care provides a second line of service with its account management platform.

“There are so many labor regulations to keep in mind,” Lebovic explained. “Meal times, sleep times, overtime hours, tracking the clock-in and clock-out processes, tax withholding; I could talk forever.”

To mitigate this pain point the company outsources the management work to a partner organization which makes sure that the families, officially considered W2 employers, are compliant with all labor and tax laws. The company charges a 20 to 25 percent service fee on top of the hourly wage paid to each caregiver.

Kindly Care currently operates in California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida. Lebovic said that the company is planning to go nationwide and is pre-screening potential caregivers in other states. The company currently has 12 employees and will also use its fresh capital to add more talent to its team.