Mecasa

Individually matches Eastern European caretakers with Central European families for in-home caretaking of seniors in need of daily support.

Most Central European countries are characterized by a rapidly growing elderly population. Germany alone has around 18 million people aged 65 and older. That number is expected to grow to 22 million by 2030. Most of these already do or eventually will require some kind of caretaking. Since many people want to stay in their own home when growing old and nursing homes are relatively more expensive, lawmakers have shifted to favoring in-home caretaking. However, there is a tremendous skills shortage in caretaking. Already today, Germany lacks about 35,000 caretakers.

At the same time, many Eastern European countries suffer from high unemployment rates and low levels of average income compared with Central Europe. This is especially true for women in their 40s and 50s whose kids have moved out from home. Since many of those possess knowledge of German or other European languages due to ancestry or education, they make for perfect in-home caretakers.

With the Schengen Agreement also including the free movement of labor within the EU, both a business and a social opportunity arise. Therefore, mecasa recruits Eastern European people for in-home caretaking in Central Europe via its online platform.

The platforms core function is to match caretakers and seniors based on individual character traits to achieve the best possible fit. In addition, parties may get to know each other up front via a video chat tool. The platform also automates the entire recruiting process in Eastern Europe and hence allows for significant scaling in the future.

There are several companies in the market that supply seniors with in-home caretakers. The three biggest ones are German/Polish and UK firms Hausengel, ProMedica, and Pflegehelden but they lack technology competencies. None of them operates a platform, runs a mobile application, or uses a matching algorithm to allocate caretakers. In consequence, we are the first tech-enabled players. With the matching algorithm, we achieve a tremendously higher matching accuracy as any of them. This results in higher caretaking quality. We also possess a significant pricing advantage over 70% of them because we employ a more competitive business model.

The internally developed matching platform is core to our business approach. Various features creating an ever more sophisticated solution are currently under development such as an extended matching algorithm. Over time, more enhancements will be added including voice analysis for depicting personality. This allows for lean processes and easy to understand approaches. Caretakers who are mostly beyond their 40s and 50s enjoy the intuitive user interface. It grows into a self-service platform that allows both caretakers and families to manage the entire caretaking process online . In consequence, more caretaking and job requests can be handled.

METRICS USED TO MEASURE SUCCESS:

- Growth in caretakers matched / revenue
- Growth in matching accuracy (mismatches happen!)
- Progress in service offering & functioning of platform


TOP THREE GOALS OVER NEXT YEAR:

- 20+ caretakers matched / revenue €60,000
- Increase matching accuracy from ~70.2 % to ~80.0%
- Launch of release version of platform

Five years from now, mecasa will be the most reliable online platform in the healthcare space in Europe. With its carefully carved out matching algorithm, it will ensure that people matched with each other will actually fit together. This is innovative because no other firm matches caretakers based on individual character traits so far. The matching approach has the potential of setting a new standard in all areas of recruiting where personal fit is crucial to business success.

Mecasa empowers Eastern European people to participate in a digitally run business. As moms and housewives, the majority of them has either not been working at all in the recent past or has only been in part-time employment. Many of them have previously been excluded from economic inclusion due to societal expectations. Once they have met such expectations, their education and training, as well as hands-on job experience is behind.

With the ease of the mecasa platform, these people can find well-paying jobs where their social experience and soft skills come to perfect use.

mecasa has matched 15 caretakers with families for in-home caretaking. Out of them, 11 remained with the families. Those 11 caretakers generated an average income which was roughly three times higher than the one they would have earned in their home country.

On the family side, eight seniors were enabled to stay in their own homes instead of having to move into unfamiliar and expensive nursing homes. In addition, relatives were ensured that their beloved ones were solicitously taken care of by trustworthy hands.

It was Simon and (Oliver) who founded the firm.
We started the business without the initial intention of turning it into a digital business model. We first wanted to get a general and offline market understanding and see if we could deliver a suitable solution int the caretaking business. Once we understood the market and its challenges, we went on to develop the platform. As we are both equipped with non-technological backgrounds, our first challenge was to find someone who could develop the tool with us. We succeeded when we met Ben who is now our CTO.

The first challenge relates to the lack of caretakers throughout Central European countries. We solve it by recruiting personnel from Eastern Europe via our online platform. Advertising takes place both on- and offline but recruiting is conducted through standardized testing including voice analysis, automated document checks and video interviews.

The second challenge concerns the personal fit of seniors and caretakers. We respond to it with our matching algorithm which defines matches based on individual character traits. Character traits are measured by standardized psychological testing with situative questions. Results are then translated into a mathematical logic and into code on the platform.

The mecasa platform will grow both by refining existing features such as the matching function and adding new ones such as voice analysis to measure personality. With more features added, not only the quality of produced results (matches) will rise but also general automation of all associated business processes will increase. The more the platform technology accomplishes without human support, the more scalable it will be, and the more people will be able to benefit from it. Such platform effectiveness goes hand in hand with overall organizational effectiveness because the backend of the platform serves as an extensive management tool.

We would use Solve's support on technological development of the platform. We would like to incorporate a video tool called Klipworks which helps non-digital natives to take professional videos. This is important for us as caretakers need to present themselves to the families so that they can get to know them in advance.

We would leverage any public recognition and attention for direct marketing purposes on social media. In addition, we would use any articles or press releases to persuade local media to run stories on us.

INTERNAL RISKS:

- Funding risk: after platform release heavy marketing expenses may be required
- Technology risk: dependency on one single developer


EXTERNAL RISKS:

- Sales / customer risk: how well will the platform be accepted? --> develop platform with regular customer feedback along the way
- Legal risk: employment law somewhat fuzzy --> regular consultations with lawyers
- Market / competition risk: well-established offline competition --> be fast to benefit from first mover advantage; closely monitor competition
- Supply / recruiting risk: in the long-run, caretakers are the bottleneck --> build up recruiting structures in all relevant Eastern European countries