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Kariyayaa platform that brings together people in need of caregivers with healthcare students, is disrupting the caregiving industry. The startup, which was showcased as part of Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, looks to enhance affordable home support, while also helping students prepare for their future careers in healthcare.
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 after she fell ill with cancer and various other diseases. During this time, Shah was a partner in a hedge fund and had to exit his fund to become a full-time caregiver for two years.
To get extra care for his wife, Shah hired college students who were studying health care to be his wife’s caregivers. Shah learned that other families were doing the same thing informally by posting flyers at local universities to find someone qualified to care for their loved ones.
“I wondered, wouldn’t it be nice if we built a formal system for them to do this, where you don’t have to go to your local nursing school or your local campus and post,” Shah told TechCrunch. “This is what I was doing. So we were saying, if you can formalize this through a technology platform, you can make a big impact.”
Fast forward to 2024, and the platform now has over 25,000 students on its platform from several schools, including Duke University, Stanford, UC Berkeley, San Jose State, the University of Texas at Austin, and more.
CareYaya conducts background checks on students who want to join the platform and then completes video-based interviews with them. On the user side, people can join the platform and then provide details about the type of care their loved ones need. CareYaya then matches students with their families, whether it’s for one-time sessions or ongoing care. After the first session, both parties can leave reviews.
The startup says it could help families save thousands of dollars on recurring care for seniors. During home care It costs on average $35 per hour in the USCareYaya charges between $17 and $20 per hour.
Because student caregivers are tech-savvy, CareYaya equips them with AI-powered technology to identify and track disease progression in patients with Alzheimer’s and dementia. The company recently launched LLM (Large Language Model) that integrates with smart glasses to collect visual data to help students provide better real-time assistance and early screening for dementia.
As for the future, CareYaya wants to explore expansion outside the US, as the platform has seen interest from people in places like Canada, Australia and the UK.
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