REGINA — A Saskatchewan based venture capital fund has announced a major investment in a Saskatoon health-care tech company.
It was announced on Thursday by Conexus Venture Capital that they had completed a pre-seed round of $900,000 in Saskatoon based Alto Technologies Inc. The funding came from the Conexus Venture Capital CVC Fund No. 2, and also included participation from Inverted Ventures, Local Investing YYC and NW Angel Fund.
Alex Shimla, principal at Conexus Venture Capital, was excited about the investment.
“Alto is a health tech platform that simplifies the at-home care process in the health-care space,” said Shimla.
"They currently work with about 4,000 caregivers and care seekers on their platform. And as part of the round, we're excited that the big focus is about now expanding out. This is a Saskatchewan-founded and led company, and has been successful in Saskatchewan and some of Alberta's markets. And part of this capital is now looking to expand their mandate and their scope across Canada here.”
Hadi Taherian, co-founder and CEO of Alto, spoke of how this funding will make a difference for his company.
“This specific partnership will help us not only make some improvement to our platform to cater to our current customers and future customers, but also give us an opportunity to make additional features for caregivers so they can enjoy a platform even more than what they do right now and give us an opportunity to expand into other locations.”
Taherian said the whole idea for the company started “during the time that we were actually looking into paying home care for some family members.”
“We noticed right away the only two options we had was either to go through a private home care agency, which on average they charge $35 to $45 an hour, but they end up only paying the caregivers maybe $15 to $17 an hour. And then there was a minimum number of hours we had to go with, which was three-hour increments at a time.”
If they had wanted to go a different direction, he said they would have to go through Kijiji, Craigslist, Care.com and post a job, pay a fee for it, and then start the interviewing process, and obtain a whole bunch of different software for scheduling and payroll management, among others.
“After having a lot of discussion with caregivers that were working within the home care industry, we noticed it's not an actual company that provides a good support, it's the caregivers who make the difference,” said Taherian. “So, our company started with an idea of how do we connect these individuals directly with our customers without the cost, while the safety and security stays in place.”
They launched Alto in 2022, and started with senior care. Taherian said that went well, and then they got some funding support from University of Calgary and started expanding into Alberta.
“That’s where our services started expanding into the disability segment too, where children and adults with disabilities actually use our platform, and then we cater our platform to the point that if they are using any sort of provincial or federal funding, the direct reporting and direct billing system is automatically put into place, and it just happens with two clicks of a button, at no cost to the customers too.”
Conexus Venture Capital itself launched its first fund in 2018 which was fully deployed. A few years ago they announced they would be seeding a second fund. Their focus is on seeding businesses that are primarily Prairie- or Saskatchewan-based or have Saskatchewan founders.
Shimla said this particular business was “an investment that, while we were working on closing the fund, we just thought we couldn't pass up. It was a great investment opportunity… with an area that we thought was important to be in. And that had a lot of potential and upside to solve the pain points of the customers there.”
Shimla said there were a couple of things that stood out about Alto that made the company interesting to invest in.
“The first is the cause and the problem that they're actually working on. Health care is a big industry, right? And it's complicated. And this is a very specific solution for a group of people who are impacted in a very specific way by home care.“
Shimla said when they spoke to case managers, care seekers and caregivers, “the experience they've had with Alto has been transformational in some cases in terms of reduced cost to the system, to the care seeker, and actually an increased wages generally for the caregivers as well. So, those factors were important.”
”But then the other factor, and I think in venture capital you'll hear this a lot, is the founders, right?”
Shimla said when they looked at Taherian and Dr. Rob Basi, “we saw tenaciousness and just an unwillingness to ever give up on this problem.”
He said the two fit that “thesis of what a Saskatchewan tech founder is, right? They're gritty. They're determined. They're logical. And so, when we looked at that and the working relationship that we've had generated by a multi-year relationship before making the investment, we felt really confident that this is a great space to be in that has a high potential to create really disruptive change in this industry.”
Taherian says his company’s number one focus right now is to work with their current customers “to see what additional features they'd like to see, how we can make their life easier also with the caregivers, too.” They also are looking at expanding to other provinces as well.
“I think with our platform, we have a great opportunity in Saskatchewan to help with a lot of different segments, and we're continuing working to see what we can do to make the life of people in Saskatchewan better."
