MAKING IT EASIER FOR OUR ELDERS. AND THOSE WHO HELP THEM

By: Cyril Bertrand

It’s time for improvement in the field of home care services for seniors. We’re proud to lead the €3M Series A round in Ouihelp, the marketplace for affordable high-end elderly care.

Home care for seniors is expensive and stressful for everyone involved, as virtually any family can testify. We can — and we must — do so much better. That’s what Ouihelp does today, with the right dose of service and technology, by putting senior people in relationship with in-home caregivers located around them.

With the invested funds, the team will focus on developing its tech platform and on marketing efforts (online, and along the hospital & care chains). There are still important challenges to face on the road to success. We’re here to help !

SELECT THE MOST RELIABLE CAREGIVERS … AND KEEP THEM AROUND

We need decently paid, reliable caregivers. Rocket-high churn rates generate anxiety among seniors, and punctuality and attendance issues severely affect the quality of care. Not to mention dramatic consequences in case of a no-show.

Churn rates won’t drop as long as wages are low. Caregivers make around €500–600 a month on average. We need help them reach at least €1000 a month to stabilize them, and make sure they won’t leave for yet another job. This means that when a caregiver works 15hrs a week, all efforts should be made to help her reach 20hrs, rather than giving the extra 5hrs to someone else.

This is where Ouihelp’s technology comes-in. By providing caregivers with a solution that focuses on reducing their daily travels and optimizing their schedules, it can improve their working conditions, get them a job they can rely on and, overall, improve the quality of service for senior persons.

BEAT ESTABLISHED COMPETITION

Homecare services are a lucrative business when properly managed. On average, a senior person needs 2 years of home-delivered care & support services, and it is not infrequent in the high-end segment to deliver more than 10 hours per week. Competition is strong in this context. We’re going after a number of €100M revenues, well established players, mostly LBO-backed.

But with a few hundreds of patients in less than 12 months, the Ouihelp team has already earned its right to play. We’re coming in with a great service and a smart technology. Dear competitors, let’s dance :)

WE AT XANGE LOVE MARKETPLACES

Our users, whether senior persons or caregivers, are not very keen on technology right now: to connect with them, WhatsApp & SMS do the job in most cases. A user-friendly marketplace is definitely the best option for this industry. Not to mention we have a thing for tool-equipped services at XAnge : Yoopies, Chauffeur Privé, LaRucheQuiDitOui, Studitemps, Evaneos, LeCollectionist, Zenchef, ALittleMarket… in all those successful startups, amazing technology is here to back the service.

It is also a space with a neat network effect : every new person that enters the network improves the service for all others. In Ouihelp’s case, recruiting new caregivers means reducing travel times for everyone. It also gives other caregivers the opportunity to focus on their specialties. As the user-base grows, it will split into different care specialties, with a beneficial impact on the overall service. And caregivers will be valued to their full potential.

More subtle but not less important, the model needs a third force (beyond customers on one side and caregivers on the other): the local agents. Still a small army today at Ouihelp, those sector-focused managers are the key ingredient to stimulate word-of-mouth acquisition and maintain spotless service delivery. The technology developed by Ouihelp is primarily meant to land in their hands.

THIS IS A MOONSHOT

Yes, there was a bit of competition in VC land for this deal. As W. Buffett puts it so nicely, to get somewhere in life, you need to 1/ know what you want 2/ Understand the price you’ll have to pay for what you want .. and 3/ pay it! We followed the advice. Why? The answer relies in the 2 elements we look for in every deal :

• an outstanding management (hello Pierre Emmanuel, Victor & Bastien) — check :)
• a future-proof, unwavering market need. We will always need to help our elderly loved ones with human-delivered services.

As I wrote in my last paper (new moonshots for French VCs, in French), it is rational to pay more for a deal if you can convince yourself the exit will also be higher. The French VC environment is changing. Competition for performance is stronger than ever, and there’s a lot of money around. This pushes us to move to new risks and adapt our strategies. In the case of Ouihelp, we are going after strong and established competition, just like we did with Chauffeur Privé. Competition is a risk we like to take.

FRANCE’S GOT TALENT

Management’s talent is not risk we like to take. Fortunately we don’t need to. It’s thrilling to see how the best brains in this country now chose the entrepreneurial path. I’m very impressed by Pierre-Emmanuel & Victor, the two founders. Both are highly structured, but Pierre-Emmanuel is the urbane and sophisticated business operator, when Victor is the combat parachutist, a pure operations guy — with a brain. They were smart enough to attract Bastien early on in the story: tech-addict, but business-pragmatic and customer-centric. Those are the ingredients needed when you enter a market dominated by LBO backed, well run businesses.

A quick note for our colleagues at Kerala Ventures, who led the seed round more than 12 months before we led the series A. Very selective, i.e. focused on few investments, and not afraid of heavy-lifting seed-stage work, they are a well differentiated animal in our space — we love to work with them.

TEST US !

One last thing about the founders. We love founders who look for more than just cash, and many entrepreneurs will tell you exactly the same when it comes to selecting their future investors. Yet coming across entrepreneurs who take time to check facts during the round — and perform thorough reference calls on their investors — is way too rare. Pierre-Emmanuel & Victor just did that. And after signing the term sheet (read — prior to closing the deal), we shared a ‘let’s get to know each other’ diner. This was pleasing, reassuring, informative and very unusual.