Digital start-up Mobilise has successfully completed its Seed investment round, signalling a growing movement to invest in providing support to the UK’s 10.6 million unpaid carers.
Digital start-up Mobilise has successfully completed its Seed investment round, signalling a growing movement to invest in providing support to the UK’s 10.6 million unpaid carers.
Led by former Salesforce EMEA chairman Steve Garnett, and supported by impact investors Ufi Ventures and the Resolution Foundation, the investment round enables Mobilise to expand and enhance the digital support it is providing to unpaid carers.
“The sector supporting unpaid carers is facing a challenging environment. This new investment provides an opportunity to innovate for carers – finding new, more accessible ways to reach more carers and provide them with the support that enables them to thrive.
“With millions of us caring for a friend, family member or neighbour, that support needs to be scalable, whilst also being effective and affordable for local authority budgets,” explains Mobilise CEO and co-founder, James Townsend.
“More and more local authorities are looking for ways to harness digital technologies to reach their carers more effectively. That’s why the digital carer support we offer at Mobilise has attracted these impact investors.”
Commissioned by local authorities, Mobilise reaches out to unpaid carers and gives access to support in the shape of Mobilise’s 60,000+ community of people caring, world-class content and events, and one-to-one coaching.
For Louise Marston, Director of Ventures at Resolution Foundation, helping carers to thrive is at the heart of the not-for-profit’s motivation for investing:
“It’s estimated 600 people every day leave work to care. That’s a huge number of people who could be missing out on the benefits of employment, through lack of support.
“I firmly believe we can change the world of work for the better, and by better supporting unpaid carers – with innovative thinking like that from Mobilise – we’re helping more people to stay in employment and not just cope, but thrive as they work and care.”
Helen Gironi, Director of Ufi Ventures, adds: “Digitising social care is a big trend right now – but start-ups like Mobilise are really making innovation happen, which is what drove our initial pre-seed investment last year
“We know 79 per cent of unpaid carers using Mobilise tools haven’t accessed support for their caring role previously – so they’re impacting carers who haven’t been reached by traditional support, giving a real opportunity to make a difference at an early stage in their caring journey. We’re delighted to continue to support the business.”
