KURASERU is one of the Kansai-born healthcare startups, which was selected for the KOBE Global Startup Gateway in December 2017 and launched its service in January 2018. Further, the company was a part of the OIH Seed Acceleration Program Batch 5 in 2018, before it started the demonstration experiment at nine medical institutions in Kobe City and successfully raised 180 million yen (about 1.6 million USD) in 2019.
Daiki Kawahara, the co-founder and CEO of KURASERU, set his mind to become an entrepreneur in his teens, following the footsteps of his father, who was also a business owner. “I aimed for an industry with a large market and high potential, which led me to focus on the medical and nursing care business,” he recalls. One day, at a hearing session that he set up in search of a business opportunity, a caregiver told him no one would take him seriously if he had no on-the-ground experience. The words resonated so deeply that Daiki got himself a job at a nursing home the following day and joined the industry without reservation.
Having begun his career as a care staff member, he transitioned to a leadership position at the facility, became a social worker at a hospital, and founded his home-care service company in 2016. “These experiences at the ground level exposed me to reality and allowed me to see how big a problem the information gap really was,” he said. For example, if a patient needs nursing care after being discharged, and the social workers lack the necessary information of the facility required for the patient’s needs, the patient may not receive the essential support. Additionally, the elderly care facilities must achieve an occupancy rate of 90% and above to stay profitable, which forces the busy care staff to also engage in sales activities. As a result, caregivers burn out, and the turnover rates remain high, causing the industry to lose people, and this sparks a negative spiral.
KURASERU is a B2B (business to business) system for users such as hospitals and nursing homes. Medical institutions can easily access a wide variety of care facility information and locate vacancies to find the best options for their patients. From a nursing home’s perspective, they can increase the occupancy rate without spending time on marketing and also improve the quality of communication with social workers for a smooth hand-off. Thus, it saves a significant amount of time and effort on both ends.
KURASERU is an innovative nursing care facility matching service, which creates a database for both medical and nursing care institutions to share information and solve problems. Moving toward their vision of “creating a world where anyone can live wherever they like,” KURASERU will continue to grow as an information platform that is needed not only in Kobe or Kansai but also worldwide.