Duos, a social health care startup, announced Tuesday it raised a $15 million Series A round of venture capital funding.
The round was led by New York City-based Imaginary Ventures with participation from San Francisco-based Forerunner Ventures, New York City-based Declaration Partners and Boston-based Optum Ventures.
Minneapolis-based Duos pairs a trained personal assistant for aging with an older adult (creating a duo, hence the name). These companions provide everything from help ordering groceries to arranging safe transportation and companionship.
The latest investment will go towards hiring engineers, product managers, operations experts and marketers. The company also has plans to hire and train over 100 duos to serve members.
Duos is also investing in technology enhancements, including the development of a mobile app. The app will be easy-to-navigate and streamline communication and task management between the user and their duo.
As long term care facilities face shortages, Duos works by leveraging a 9-3 economy of stay-at-home parents to act as trained, personalized support for the more than 12 million Americans over 65 years old who live alone.
CEO and co-founder Karl Ulfers said the pandemic exposed how fragile the system of aging is for older adults and caregivers. He added there's a large burden put on caregivers to do things such as schedule transportation and appointments, among other tasks.
"All of those things today are just incredibly taxing on both the older adults and the caregivers," Ulfers said.
Duos is available in all 50 states through a direct-to-consumer offering, and its partnered with health insurance plans including Phoenix-based Magellan Health and Danville, Pa.-based Geisinger Health Plan.
Ulfers founded the company after seeing how adamant his older-than-90 grandparents were to live in their own home.
Before DUOS, Ulfers founded Rally Health, a syndicate of Optum.
