For millions, building a life abroad has brought opportunity, but often at the cost of leaving family far behind. For those with aging parents, that cost can include the emotional, logistical, and financial toll of arranging care across timezones and cultures.
Nila Cares aims to address that tension. Inspired by his family’s experience, it offers assurance to families by providing reliable, trusted, and practical support for loved ones at home. Nila Cares founder, Anthony Jacob, joined TechTalks with TFN to share his story and tell us how Nila Cares is growing to support diaspora communities looking for care across borders.
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A startup shaped by distance and duty
Jacob’s inspiration for healthtech startup Nila Cares took shape while working in fintech. This is where he began to notice that some transactions carried far more urgency than others, particularly with customers sending money home.
“The people who always complained whenever there was a delay in a transaction, were people sending money for healthcare,” he said. For most transactions, delays did not cause concern, he explained, but even a short delay in payments to family for healthcare would result in complaints and bad reviews.
Anthony and his sister live abroad, while their parents remain in Sri Lanka. Like many families, distance did not remove responsibility, something that became especially difficult during the pandemic. “All these companies have made it very easy to send money, but healthcare is still a problem,” he said. “You still send money to a cousin, family member, or neighbour, who then pays locally and finds care.” In conversations with friends and colleagues, he discovered he was far from alone in experiencing the difficulties and anxiety it caused. “Whether they were Nigerian or Indian or Bangladeshi, they were all facing the same challenges.”
Care across thousands of miles
Jacob is aware that Nila Cares moves beyond the transactional nature of cross-border payments. At its core, it is about building cross-border trust. Nila Cares is, after all, asking people to trust them with their parents’ healthcare, and it can be a sensitive subject for many. “There’s still a bit of stigma and education. People ask: ‘Why are you outsourcing the care for your parent?” Jacob said.
Nila aims to address that with quality. A major challenge has been the lack of regulation in target markets, where, unlike the UK, eldercare nursing is not a formally regulated profession. This led Nila Cares to develop its own bespoke recruitment and training programme.
“They have to have five years of experience, … we do scenario-based interviews, we work with a third party to do a police clearance,” he explained. Successful candidates then follow a geriatric training programme, including skills like safeguarding as well as healthcare. The assessment even considers personality. “We try to test them for empathy, sometimes old people can be a bit grumpy,” he joked.
“The aim is to recruit high-quality nurses who, as the prime representatives of Nila Cares, become trusted, long-term partners for families, providing not only care, but peace of mind.. In a sector and market where culture can matter as much as healthcare, that relationship can be vital. “We’re trying to be that kind of gold standard,” Jacob told us.
Raising capital when the story doesn’t fit the room
Jacob has also had to address a fundraising challenge. “People think it’s not a big business,” he said. “But there’s always going to be old people … and there’s just not enough founders building in that space.’ However, persuading investors was difficult; Jacob found there was a gap between the problem he wanted to solve and the cultural experience and expectations of investors.
A major problem for Jacob was the lack of investors with immigrant backgrounds. “I had this challenge of having to explain South Asian family dynamics,” he recalled. “I’d have to spend 20 minutes describing the problem before I could even talk about the business and the traction.” Momentum shifted when he began pitching to partners who had lived experience of caring for family internationally, even within Europe. These investors had some understanding of both the logistical and emotional aspects of the problems Nila Cares solves that he started to gain traction, closing a $2.4 million pre-seed round last year.
Jacob also noted how important getting the initial momentum proved to be. “When you’re trying to get a term sheet, you’re the one that’s desperate, and the VCs hold all the power,” he said. Once he got the first investor, though, attitudes would change and investors would take a different approach. “Everyone’s asking: ‘Why are they investing in this guy? What did we miss? What didn’t we see?’ … They start reaching out to you.”
Looking ahead, and supporting the person behind the business
Although Nila Cares has the potential to be a truly global service, Jacob is focused on building depth over the next 12 to 18 months before expanding into other markets. In part this reflects the opportunity he sees in India. “India is just such a big market, I think you can build a billion-dollar business in what we’re doing, just in India,” he said. However, he also recognises the challenge in building a business model that combines tech with the personal touch required by healthcare. “The challenge we have is that it’s such an operationally heavy business, the tech needs to be right to allow us to scale it.”
With clients across the world using Nila Cares to provide care for loved ones in India, Jacob has had to show resilience and patience to overcome the challenges of funding as well as the practical issues of working across multiple borders.
This is, perhaps, reflected in the advice he would offer to those starting their own founder journey. “Who you pick to work with really affects how quickly you execute or how successful the business is,” he said. He also suggests that, rather than beginning with a product, founders should start with as many conversations about their idea as possible.
His final piece of advice, though, is perhaps most fitting for a startup that has trust and care at its core: “Stay sane,” he said. “Surround yourself with people outside of the business that can support you and just keep you grounded, because it’s very easy to get completely worked up in the problem you’re trying to solve.”
This article is part of TechTalks with TFN, our video interview series unpacking the people, products and policy shaping the next era of tech. The location partner for this episode is The Other House.
