Acquisitions are also on the program, CEO and founder of the company Adrian Schauer said on Tuesday in an interview with Press.
The home health care software company is on the rise in this post-COVID-19 time. “The pandemic has accelerated the attraction for home care,” says the leader.
Investors are also showing great interest in the platform developed by AlayaCare, which is deployed all over the world. A new round of financing has just brought him 225 million, “and the demand from investors was greater than what we were able to accommodate,” said Adrian Schauer.
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Investissement Québec participated in this latest round of financing. For the Caisse, this is a third investment in AlayaCare. In July 2019, the Caisse, Inovia and Investissement Québec had invested 51 million in the company. Six months later, in January 2020, the same investors injected 37 million back into the company founded in Montreal seven years ago.
PHOTO HUGO-SÉBASTIEN AUBERT, PRESS ARCHIVES
Adrian Schauer, CEO and Founder of AlayaCare
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This time, the amount of the investment by the Caisse and its Quebec partners Inovia and Investissement Quebec was not specified.
Focus on R&D and the United States
According to Adrian Schauer, Alaya will continue to invest heavily to improve its platform that is transforming the way home care is delivered. Half of every dollar of income is invested in R&D, he said.
Its intention is to improve its offer in terms of follow-up care and help solve the problems related to the shortage of manpower.
Currently, more than 500 home care organizations use software designed by Alaya. Its income is roughly evenly divided between Canada, the United States and Australia, but this proportion is set to change with the expected expansion in the United States.
“It’s a market 10 times bigger than Canada and that’s where 70% of our new sales come from,” says the manager. Consolidation opportunities are also present in the US market, from which Alaya could take advantage.
No customer in Quebec yet
AlayaCare’s clients are mostly private home care companies, but public health systems also use its services. In Canada, the company has customers in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario, but not in Quebec, where its head office is located.
That could change with the shift towards home care that the Quebec government has resolved to take after the COVID-19 crisis, believes Adrian Schauer. What happened in Quebec in CHSLDs, other countries elsewhere in the world have also experienced it, according to him.
Since its founding, AlayaCare has experienced solid growth which is expected to accelerate with the rising demand for home care. The company, which has 470 employees, expects to hire 300 more people in the next few years.
In 10 years, the CEO of AlayaCare believes that his company will have become a leader in its market and will continue to grow. “Ten years is a long time in the life of a start-up, but I don’t think Alaya will be sold. It may be that we are public, but it is not certain. ”
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