Gillian Tee had already done the thing most founders dream of. She had built Rocketrip, a travel startup backed by Y Combinator, which went on to raise nearly US$30 million. Then she did something that does not fit the usual startup legend. She moved home.
After about 15 years abroad she returned to Singapore to be closer to her family.
A caregiver who does not show up does, and so the work is vetting and training as much as technology.
What they do show is what home looked like. Singapore was ageing fast. Families who wanted care for a parent had few clear options: an agency with a phone number, a foreign domestic worker, a nursing home. Prices were opaque and trust was thin.
In 2016 she started Homage, an app and marketplace where families could book prescreened caregivers and nurses. The first money was small. A seed round of US$1.2 million came from 500 Startups, Golden Gate Ventures and SeedPlus. In July 2018 a US$4.15 million Series A followed, co-led by Golden Gate and HealthXCapital.
Care is a harder business than software. A late app does not hurt anyone. A caregiver who does not show up does, and so the work is vetting and training as much as technology. The Series B was led by EV Growth.
The turn came in 2021, when the pandemic made home care urgent. On 3 September Homage announced a US$30 million Series C, led by Sheares Healthcare Group, the healthcare arm of Temasek. The round was oversubscribed, and Homage said its total funding passed US$45 million. It reported more than 6,000 prescreened care professionals and revenue that had more than tripled in a year. Business outside Singapore grew over 600 percent that year, with operations in Malaysia and Australia.
The company had to prove it could carry the same trust across borders, in countries with different care rules and a different workforce.
The quiet insight is in why she came back at all. A founder with a respected exit-in-waiting went home for family reasons, and found that the same reason, caring for someone, was a market. The best problems are sometimes the ones that arrive at your own door.