Nila Cares targets cross-border eldercare gaps for diaspora families
Nila Cares, a care coordination startup focused on helping diaspora families arrange reliable eldercare in their home countries, has raised $2.4 million in a pre-seed round after a seven-week fundraising sprint, according to founder Anthony Jacob. The company is positioning itself at the intersection of healthcare operations and technology, aiming to reduce the friction families face when managing care across borders, time zones, and local systems that often lack consistent regulation.
For many immigrant communities, sending money home is straightforward. Ensuring that the money translates into trustworthy, day-to-day support for aging parents is not. Nila Cares is attempting to close that gap by providing vetted caregivers and structured care processes, with an emphasis on trust, quality control, and family communication.
A problem surfaced in fintech: healthcare payments that couldn’t wait
Jacob traces the idea back to his time working in fintech, where he noticed a distinct pattern in customer behavior. Transactions tied to healthcare needs were treated differently from routine remittances. “The people who always complained whenever there was a delay in a transaction, were people sending money for healthcare,” he said in an interview as part of TechTalks with TFN.
In his view, that urgency revealed more than a payments issue. It highlighted the anxiety families experience when care depends on informal networks and uncertain execution. Jacob and his sister live abroad while their parents remain in Sri Lanka, a dynamic familiar to millions of families. During the pandemic, the logistical burden intensified, and the shortcomings of ad-hoc arrangements became harder to ignore.
“All these companies have made it very easy to send money, but healthcare is still a problem,” Jacob said, describing how families often end up routing funds through relatives, neighbors, or intermediaries who then try to find care locally. Conversations with peers from Nigerian, Indian, and Bangladeshi backgrounds reinforced that the challenge was widespread and culturally consistent: distance does not remove responsibility, but it does complicate oversight.
Building trust across borders, not just completing a transaction
Unlike many services that stop at facilitating payments, Nila Cares is built around the operational reality of care. That means convincing customers to trust a third party with sensitive responsibilities, including medical support, eldercare routines, and family expectations that can be shaped by culture as much as clinical need.
Jacob acknowledged the stigma that can accompany outsourcing care. “People ask: ‘Why are you outsourcing the care for your parent?’” he said. To counter that, the company is leaning on quality assurance and standardized processes, particularly in markets where eldercare roles may not be formally regulated.
Recruitment and training designed for uneven regulatory environments
In markets where professional caregiving lacks clear oversight, Nila Cares has developed its own recruitment and training approach. Candidates are expected to have at least five years of experience, complete scenario-based interviews, and undergo third-party police clearance checks, according to Jacob. Those who pass enter a geriatric training program that includes safeguarding practices and healthcare fundamentals.
The selection process also evaluates interpersonal fit. Jacob emphasized empathy as a core requirement, noting that caregiving is as much about temperament and patience as it is about tasks. The company’s goal is to establish caregivers as long-term partners for families, providing continuity and peace of mind rather than one-off support.
Fundraising challenge: explaining the cultural context before the business
While eldercare is a massive and growing market, Jacob said raising capital required overcoming investor assumptions about scale and defensibility. “People think it’s not a big business,” he said, arguing that demographic trends and the global nature of migration make the category structurally durable.
He also described a mismatch between the lived experience of many investors and the realities of cross-border family care. A lack of immigrant representation in venture capital, he said, meant he often spent significant time explaining family dynamics and the emotional stakes before he could discuss traction and unit economics.
Momentum improved when he pitched investors who had personal experience supporting relatives internationally, even within Europe. That shift helped Nila Cares close its $2.4 million pre-seed round. Jacob also highlighted a common venture dynamic: once a first investor commits, perceived risk declines and inbound interest rises as other firms reassess what they may have overlooked.
Strategy: deepen operations before expanding to new markets
Although the long-term ambition is global, Jacob said the near-term plan is to build depth over the next 12 to 18 months before expanding to additional regions. India is a central focus, with Jacob arguing the market is large enough to support a major business on its own.
Still, he framed the core scaling challenge as operational. Care is not a purely digital product, and delivering consistent service across geographies requires strong processes, reliable staffing, and technology that supports coordination without removing the human touch. “It’s such an operationally heavy business, the tech needs to be right to allow us to scale it,” he said.
Founder advice: pick partners carefully and protect your resilience
Reflecting on the journey, Jacob emphasized the importance of choosing collaborators who improve execution speed and decision-making. He also encouraged founders to validate ideas through extensive conversations rather than starting with a product build.
His final advice focused on sustainability for the person behind the company: “Stay sane,” he said, urging founders to maintain support systems outside the business to stay grounded amid the intensity of building in high-stakes categories like healthcare.
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