Investor perspective: How Dele will change the healthcare system for an aging population
Photo Dele Health
The aging population in the western world and parts of Asia is a global issue. In Japan there are more people above 60 than below 20, in the US there are 8000 new 65-year-olds every day and in the Nordics 2/3 of those working in healthcare today will be retired in 2030. If we don't digitize and change how we provide healthcare and safety for our elders, we have a major problem in just a few years.
Dele addresses the holy grail with regards to senior care - the fact that they start to fall. Falling is the number one reason for accidental death among seniors above 75 years old, and even if the senior survives a fall, treatment costs after a fall are high and it reduces quality of life for the senior since they often need more care after having recovered from a fall incident.
Dele detects falls and alerts staff at senior living communities when it happens. Through their data fusion platform and the insights this provides, they are currently building out their predictive features to protect seniors against future falls.
Northscaler wanted to work with companies where technology can make a positive impact to the world. Dele fit that bill.
What did Northscaler do for Dele?
One of the first things they did, was to rebuild their entire software platform since what they had at the time could not scale for a large market. They then focused the strategy on fall detection and ultimately prevention and found the right technology and distribution partners to help bring this to market. Northscaler brought a new CEO (Carine Zeier) on board and helped find the right capital partners to fund the growth. In addition, they helped identify, recruit and onboard Dele’s new sales team in the Nordics and the US.
Where is Dele now?
As with any new B2B tech company, it takes time to build the pipeline and customer base. But today customers are buying into the story of digitalization, both in the US and the Nordics. You must remember, the main competitor to Dele is the red cord you pull when you need help – 30-year-old technology. The fact that more technology companies move into the space just proves there is a market, and right now Dele has a pretty good head start and established partnerships with key players in the industry.
Who is Northscaler?
Northscaler is a next generation operational VC in the sense that they work as an extended arm of management in the companies that they help scale. There are three main components on how Northscaler help Nordic companies achieve scale:
Finding the right capital partners and investors - you need capital to grow fast
Help with commercialization by setting up distribution, hiring the right salespeople and partners. Particularly, they are good at bringing companies into the US market since they have most of their boots on the ground there.
With their world-class tech-team they can function as solution architects, tech-leads on projects and expert developers in cooperation with the customers dev team, system integration partners and other software experts. They are particularly good at architecting and implementing highly scalable solutions and high-frequency data processing systems.
