[Life Chapter 3 Business] Caregiver Matching Startup 'CareNation'

CEO Kim Gyeonwon, Experienced in the Care Industry, Starts a Business
KAIST Engineering PhD Graduate CEO Seo Daegeon Joins
1,500 Matches Made Monthly

CareNation CEO Seodae Geon, a platform startup that matches caregivers and patients. Photo by Younghan Heo younghan@

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunju Lee] When you open the office door of CareNation, located in Handong Building on Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, the first things that catch your eye are arcade game machines and a spacious dartboard for games. Although the lobby is not large, there is a noticeable effort to arrange charming spaces where employees can take a breather. On the 6th, Asia Economy met with CareNation’s co-CEO Daegun Seo (44) at this office. Before joining CareNation as CEO in 2018, Seo completed his Ph.D. program in Bio and Brain Engineering at KAIST and has experience running a partner company of NICE Credit Information that conducts startup technology evaluations.

‘CareNation’ is a manpower matching platform startup that connects patients and caregivers. It was founded in 2013 by CEO Kyunwon Kim (42), who accumulated practical experience in administration and medical fee management at medical institutions. CareNation developed its unique business model by addressing the problem of limited caregiver supply compared to the demand from medical consumers seeking caregivers. They focused on the industry-specific limitation where consumers have to choose services ‘blindly’ due to the severe shortage of caregivers.

Of course, many companies have recognized the growth potential of the caregiver matching industry. Especially with the recent rise of silver tech businesses, numerous platform companies offering caregiver connection as a business model have emerged rapidly. CEO Daegun Seo emphasized CareNation’s distinctive feature as a ‘reverse auction, bidding system’ matching platform. The more positive the accumulated patient evaluations and caregiver qualifications and histories on the platform, the higher the price caregivers can ‘bid’ for jobs through the ‘reverse auction’ system. Seo said, “Allowing caregivers to propose their service value to patients based on their own history is the driving force that enables high-quality service without direct platform intervention.”

Based on this, CareNation has been actively expanding to enhance the platform since March 2022. In March 2022, they acquired CN Company, a specialist in online and offline payment fields, and in December last year, they acquired a nursing center corporation called ‘Eoreushinse Sang.’ As the business model’s growth potential was verified, they also faced a technology theft incident by a large corporation. NHN launched a service called ‘WeCare,’ similar to CareNation’s service, which caused controversy. Fortunately, the issue was raised at the 2021 National Assembly audit, and NHN eventually terminated the WeCare service. Seo expressed regret, saying, “In a situation where the market needs to be actively opened, if a capital-strong company had participated as a legitimate player, the reflective benefits could have been considerable.”

- What led you to focus on the business model of connecting caregivers?

▲ CareNation was founded by CEO Kyunwon Kim in 2013. I joined in 2020. Before founding the company, Kim worked for over ten years in medical institutions handling administration and overall medical fee management. Kim’s father is also a chairman of a medical foundation, and his mother is the director of a nursing hospital. Naturally, he became aware of the limitations within the offline-based caregiving industry.

The caregiving market operates strictly from the supplier’s perspective. Caregivers themselves are extremely scarce. Therefore, patients and their guardians who need to find caregivers have very limited choices. They must rely entirely on intermediary companies without sufficient information about caregivers. We judged that if this problem could be properly solved, the potential would be high. This market is very large. Excluding tertiary hospitals, the number of beds in nursing hospitals is actually larger. We saw potential in a service that creates smooth matching within the market through stable supply based on caregiver demand.

- What differentiates CareNation?

▲ CareNation operates a platform where caregivers directly propose and bid for services based on the patient’s disease information provided by the guardian. In other words, it is a ‘reverse auction’ structure where caregivers compete for jobs based on detailed patient information entered by guardians or patients. Patients select caregivers based on profiles of caregivers who proposed service supply, accumulated reviews and ratings within the platform, and the caregiving fees proposed by caregivers.

However, for such matching to occur rationally, there must be an appropriate ‘caregiving fee’ standard. We uniquely provide a guideline that automatically determines the appropriate caregiving fee level according to the detailed condition of patients. Using this standard as a reference, we help facilitate matching at a reasonable level. In the offline caregiving industry, caregiving fees tend to be somewhat generalized.

Even among patients with the same disease group, the difficulty of caregiving can vary greatly depending on the patient’s specific condition. However, because the market is supplier-centered, most patient conditions have been classified into only four or five categories, and caregiving fees have been uniformly set for a long time. We are different. When the patient side inputs detailed patient conditions, the platform proposes a caregiving fee derived through accumulated data and algorithms that is deemed reasonable. Based on this, consumers can make rational choices through information such as caregivers’ histories and reviews of caregiving services by patients or guardians.

- How does CareNation provide an appropriate caregiving fee standard and guideline that both consumers and caregivers can accept?

▲ Our company started as HMC Networks Co., Ltd. in 2013. At that time, caregiver matching was not the core business model. We conceived the current CareNation service model around 2015, but we judged that offline business experience was essential before launching the business. Therefore, in 2016, we acquired and operated ‘Green Silver Caregivers Association,’ the number one offline caregiving company. Through this, we secured about 400,000 data points that form the basis for deriving appropriate caregiving fee levels through algorithms. This is the foundation of our current service model that can propose caregiving fees according to subtle changes in patient conditions such as weight, hospitalization period, and condition.

- The limitation of matching services is that you cannot directly manage the quality of the supplied service.

▲ Since it is a matching platform service, direct intervention in caregiver supply and management causes legal conflicts. Therefore, we believed a system that strongly encourages caregivers to manage their own service quality was necessary. The conclusion was the ‘bidding system.’ Caregivers with positive reviews and high ratings for the caregiving services they provided within the platform have a higher chance of matching at relatively higher prices, even for the same patient.

There were doubts about whether this virtuous cycle could work properly when we first received investment. However, after more than two and a half years of service, we believe we have proven it with results. About 1,500 matchings occur actively every month. The company, which was a small business with about five employees in 2013, has grown to about 90 employees now. The cumulative investment amount has reached 23.5 billion KRW to date.

And one more important thing is CareNation’s ‘prepayment’ policy. One of the problems caregivers faced in the offline market was that payment was made more than ten days after the caregiving service ended. CareNation is different. Patients who want to use the service must prepay. Caregivers receive payment for 24 hours of caregiving immediately after finishing work every day. We have created a space where caregivers want to ‘win’ jobs through our platform. Currently, about 50,000 caregivers are registered users of our service, and matching usually occurs within 10 days at the latest.