Technology, which is changing the way we live, work and play, offers a golden opportunity to address the growing needs of silver populations around the world. Homage, a senior home care marketplace and technology platform that seamlessly connects seniors to high quality care on demand, aims to achieve that very objective. 

The Homage mobile app, launched in May 2016, adopts the asset-light models of cab booking apps for smartphones, such as Grab, Uber and Didi Chuxing. Harnessing smart technology, web engineering and mobile computing to match care recipients and caregivers, Homage offers a suite of services ranging from nursing care and daily living to therapy. The user-friendly app ensures accurate, quick, seamless and stress-free booking; acceptance, delivery and reporting of home care services; and matching Care Owners (care recipients or seniors) or Care Managers (family members of the seniors) with Care Pros (caregivers).

Homage was created as a result of the unique and personal experiences faced by its three co-founders, Gillian Tee, Lily Phang and Tong Duong, in regards to the challenge of elderly home care. Tee, an entrepreneur, had returned to Singapore after 15 years in the US, to be with her ageing mother. While taking care of her mother, she continued to explore the start-up ecosystem to identify opportunities that would keep her engaged in the tech scene.

Her personal experience of looking after her mother made her realise that the country’s demographic profile was changing quickly and elders like her mother would need services that empowered them to age with dignity and grace in the comfort of their homes. She knew that the problem was imminent and the lack of innovation in the segment warranted an urgent solution. This prompted Gillian to start exploring means of converging technology and healthcare.

Phang, with over 20 years of experience as a healthcare executive, had worked in Europe and Africa, as well as in several countries in Asia, including China, Korea and Japan. She shared, “While working at the hospital, I saw that families were fatigued by caring for the elders and there were instances of them deserting their elders at hospitals. Not everyone could afford fulltime caregivers, and the domestic helpers lack adequate training and experience. Moreover, most of the seniors like to stay in the familiar environment of their homes. Long-term caregiving is a highly draining and demanding task, and I know this from my personal experience of caring for the elders in my family. I genuinely felt the need for an efficient and reliable home care service that was made available on demand.”

Meanwhile, Tong, then an undergraduate at Singapore Management University’s (SMU) School of Information Systems, was also keen on tapping into technology to create a trusted marketplace for care professionals and seniors. He was motivated by his first-hand experience of the challenges of caregiving when his family had to take care of his grandmother who was a diabetic. In addition to the knowledge and experience gained from volunteering activities, he developed a proposal for an online marketplace that matched the elderly to potential caregivers.

Tee, Phang and Tong were introduced by Lim Der Shing, co-founder of the online job portal JobsCentral, a mentor to all of them, and who would eventually become their angel investor too. 

Commenting on the fruition of the initiative, Tong said: “SMU’s Institute of Innovation & Entrepreneurship and the Lien Centre for Social Innovation were very supportive of the idea and facilitated access to resources, networks of experts and mentors. The proposal was awarded S$50,000 from Create4Good Challenge—a social initiative that is jointly organized by SMU Lien Centre for Social Innovation and SUTD Entrepreneurship Centre that promotes innovative solutions which address society’s most pressing challenges. We also won an award of S$20,000 at the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce-SMU business innovation competition. Such support is critically essential for social enterprise start-ups—not only for the initial impetus but to sustain their double bottom line and matchup with their conventional counterparts.”

In the short time since its launch, Homage has differentiated itself as a startup specialising in the geriatric segment and anchoring its service on technology. Singapore’s President Halimah Yacob, in a speech at the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Award Networking Event in 2018, commented: “Homage taps on technology to connect caregivers with those in need of care, exemplifying the model of the sharing economy. Their app is user-friendly and effective, as all apps should be.”

This case, written by Jonathan Chang and Lakshmi Appasamy, Case Writer from The Centre for Management Practice (CMP) at SMU, analyses the social impact of a demographic change and adoption of technology for social innovation. The case also highlights how social enterprises decide to grow by choosing the most appropriate scaling strategy.

 To read the case in full, please visit the CMP website by clicking here.