Caring for an aging relative can be tough, especially if they need round the clock assistance. However, traditional options like nursing homes aren’t always ideal. That’s why The Care Side stepped in to offer an alternative. Read about how this startup is helping Australian families in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Provides in-home care for seniors.
CEO Gareth Mahon told Small Business Trends, “We help to keep the elderly in their own home, and out of a nursing home, by providing in-home carers to look after their personal needs when they no longer can. People can age at home surrounded by their friends and family, in comfort and security and retain their dignity and independence.”
Business Niche
Providing affordable service.
“We have developed proprietary technology systems that automate all administrative functions that remove the need for large teams of back-office staff. This all means that we have much lower operating costs than other providers and are able to pass that savings to our customers.”
How the Business Got Started
To help families.
“My co-founder had a grandmother who needed more care than could be provided by her daughter. And so she was put into a very expensive nursing home. Her grandmother did not like the nursing home and wished she could have stayed in her own home. She eventually died in a nursing home. We thought how much better it would have been if she could have stayed at home, as she wished. So we started the CareSide with the aim of helping all of the aged to stay at home and live independently for as long as possible.”
Biggest Win
Helping their first client get out of a nursing home.
“Our most memorable win was the first time we rescued an elderly Italian man, Cosimo, from a nursing home. He was so miserable there. He cried every time his daughters came to visit him because he just wanted to go home to his vegetable garden. Cosimo had Dementia, so we needed a way to provide around the clock supervision at home, so that he was safe. The family only had a limited budget and we were able to structure his care in an innovative way so that he could stay safe at home, tending to his vegetables.”
Biggest Risk
Creating a completely new system.
“We knew that we had to be better value than our competitors. So we custom built an end-to-end business management system. This means we have a much smaller back office than all of our competitors. About 70% smaller. It means that we scale extremely effectively and can provide more care at cheaper rates because the size of our back office team only needs to grow very slowly. This took 3 years and over 100,000 lines of code. It could have been years of wasted time and effort that would simply be thrown away if it did not work.”
Lesson Learned
Keep it simple.
“Early on we adopted a very accurate accounting system based on accruals, which whilst more technically correct, created a lot of confusion for our clients as the concepts were too hard to understand for them. Our lesson learned is that simple is better, even if it is not as technically correct.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Expanding.
“We would expand into another state by creating a new office location there so that we could help more people.”
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Image: The Care Side
