The Helper Bees announced Thursday that it has raised $12.8 million in funding to help elderly people stay in their homes as they get older.
Trust Ventures led the Series B round with participation from Silverton Partners, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, Impact Engine, and Congress Avenue Ventures.
The Helper Bees has seen its revenue increase by three times this past year and it has grown its team size by eight times.
The Helper Bees works with insurance carriers to allow older people to stay in their homes and receive treatment as they age. That results in cost savings for Long Term Care Insurance and Medicare Advantage carriers.
The Helper Bees acquired healthAlign earlier this year that allowed it to enter the Medicare Advantage market.
More than 90 percent of aging Americans would prefer to stay in their own homes rather than move to a nursing home or assisted living facility, according to an AARP study. The Helper Bees’ network of in-home service providers allows them to do that. It created a platform that can handle everything from in-home care to pest control services.
“Because all of these aging in place services live on the same platform, payers have access to standardized data and next-level insights,” said Char Hu, CEO and co-founder of The Helper Bees. “When combined with our industry-leading digital claims tools, the two-way data stream allows for a completely personalized aging experience. This means that The Helper Bees is in a position to understand aging-in-place in America better than any other provider.”
“The Helper Bees’ platform is about giving flexibility for seniors to live in independence and comfort, which is something the majority of them want but far fewer are able to maintain as they age,” said Salen Churi, general partner at Trust Ventures. “Today, older folks end up losing their independence because of complexity – it’s hard to access these disparate services within a broken and myopic healthcare system governed by a web of complex regulations. The Helper Bees brings together a fragmented market of services, each of which alone doesn’t fully unlock a senior’s independence, but together they represent something you can’t put a price on.”
The Helper Bees plans to use the Series B funds to expand its Aging-in-Place Marketplace services and delivery to reach more customers, according to a news release.
The Helper Bees was part of the 2016 Techstars Austin cohort. The company, founded in 2016, previously raised $6 million in Series A funding in July of 2020.
