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Mrs. Gillian Tee makes a face and moans, “I’m tired.”
His voice drips with mock distress, but the fatigue is real. Since the pandemic began, the 37-year-old founder of Homage, a nursing and home-care startup, has been pulling in long days and into the late hours of the night.
“We never expected to play such a role in fighting Covid-19,” says Ms Tee, whose team has trained and been deploying an army of some 400 healthcare professionals to, among other things, operate mobile detection stations. health, carry out swab tests and give telemedicine consultations.
“They have gone to quarantine zones, nursing homes, hospitals and migrant worker communities and dormitories,” he says proudly.
In fact, Homage has come a long way since 2017, when it started as an app connecting clients in need of home care with a group of roughly 250 nurses.
In three years, that group has grown tenfold and now has a network of approximately 3,000 healthcare professionals, including physicians and physical therapists.
Beyond caring for the elderly, Homage offers a suite of nursing and home care services, from medical accompaniment to care in a hospital facility and support for children with muscular dystrophy and other illnesses or disabilities.
“Our team no longer only enters homes, but also daycares, nursing homes and hospitals,” says Ms. Tee.
The events of the past nine months have also shown that Homage can play a critical role in the event of a health crisis.
The coronavirus was a bolt from nowhere, Tee says. “We just felt this strong sense of urgency to act because we knew that with the number of healthcare professionals on our platform, we couldn’t sit down and we needed to be part of the solution.
“At a time like this, do we hide in a corner and cover our faces? No,” he says emphatically.
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The fourth in an eight-part series on purpose-driven businesses committed to solving challenging problems of our time.
Still, she was in awe of how many people on her team rose to the occasion.
“Everyone who responded raised their hands and said ‘count on me,'” he says. “They could have chosen to stay on the back burner, but instead they continued to help those in need and stayed true to the profession of health care and taking care of being there through good times and bad.
The pandemic, he says, has been good for business “but not on the kind of trajectory we expected.”
“But it has certainly strengthened our faith in what we do,” he says.
Homage expanded to Malaysia and raised more than $ 10 million in Series B funding earlier this year.
Clark University psychologist Jeffrey Arnett once described millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, as “an exceptionally generous generation that holds great promise to improve the world.”
Ms. Tee, who holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University, certainly lives up to that description.
Although he enjoyed an exciting career in New York and Silicon Valley, where he co-founded Rocketrip, a successful travel company, he gave up that dazzling life to start Homage.
The reason? She has a soft spot for older people, as her nanny and maternal grandmother raised her with love.
Personally and professionally curious, she was also a once an artificial intelligence researcher, software engineer, and technology consultant, believing in living life on her own terms.
He started with the dream of harnessing technology to improve senior care in Singapore, but now he wants to include the entire decentralized care continuum.
Building homage, he says, has been a profound journey of personal growth. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world.”
That tribute, a 2016 DBS Foundation Social Enterprise Grant, has a social impact and is something she is proud of.
“Everyone is going through an existential crisis. What does it mean to care personally? How can I be there? What do I do to be there? Let’s worry about the things that matter. Let’s play a role and make it count.”
You were in your early 30s when you started Homage. Isn’t elderly care a strange business idea for someone so young?
I lived with my two grandmothers growing up and was also close to my elderly nanny, who was employed by my parents to help me take care of myself since I was a baby.
As a result, I am familiar with the difficulties, tastes, thoughts, problems that older people face. Fundamentally, older people are people who are just us, but at a different stage of life and their needs translate into their desire to continue contributing to those around them.
Like us, many also need help even when they are not sick. So, I am very involved in the business of wellness, health and care, which affects the entire family unit.
Apparently you don’t like to have things too easy and prefer to learn the hard way. How well has this attitude served you in life?
It has definitely taken me down adventurous roads. I believe that, fundamentally, overcoming difficult times generates value and that translates into continuous personal growth.
Not backing down from challenges has been crucial in my journey as an entrepreneur because I encounter setbacks almost daily. You just have to keep learning and don’t give in despite failures, missteps, or challenges.
In the end, it has helped me build a team and have an impact. Homage, at the end of the day, is a business with a mission and we are serious about pushing ourselves and enduring tough times for a worthy cause.
In three years, Homage has multiplied by more than ten. It started with a network of just over 200 nurses, but today it has nearly 3,000 nurses, therapists, general caregivers, and physicians. How did that happen?
Homage’s team made that happen. When I look back, it is the process of reapplying the fundamental principles over and over again that got us where we are.
The basics of building the right team; make sure we have a culture that accepts change and a growth mindset; make sure we are rigorous, moving fast and towards a single focal point; and the impact of the constant reapplication of these fundamentals when making decisions over time.
You can accomplish much more than you imagine, with the proper alchemy of people who are focused on solving a worthwhile problem.
How has Covid-19 changed the rules of the game for Homage?
One thought that I carry with me today is that if we can get through last year, we can get through anything as a team.
When the Dorscon turned orange, we started building a working group that was trained with PCR (polymerase chain reaction) swab and PPE (personal protective equipment), as well as mask. Fast forward nine months, we’ve created a task force of 400 Covid-19 first responders, including trainers, nurses, care assistants, and doctors.
Covid-19 deepened and solidified our fundamental belief that we need to build more platforms to enable community healthcare at scale and also invest in community care infrastructure and preventive health programs.
More than anything, I think the pandemic made the Homage team stronger and more united as we came together to build solutions to be part of the national response.
What are the three most profound lessons you have learned about life and aging since Homage started?
First, as I encountered the various types of cases that Homage tackled, I have learned from our own care professionals and have been inspired by the value of personal sacrifice, dedication and devotion to help others and our society. If you look back, it’s often times of self-care, similar to the care I received from older people when I was young, that mean and count the most.
Second, aging is a normal and unavoidable process. The fact that you pass a certain age does not make you a different person. It is important that all people at any stage of their life are treated with respect and dignity, and good physical and mental health is important for everyone: the elderly, adults, youth or children.
Lastly, the ability to link short-term goals to long-term goals is one of the key factors for the overall continued growth of a business.
The process depends on an agile and accurate decision making, optimizing the allocation of resources and the management of strong people and relationships.
Do you think there is a reason for everything and that everything you have done, personally and professionally, has led you here?
Insurance. Working at Homage feels like a full circle to me. It combines many of my worlds: technology, business or social and economic development.
However, I am still growing and feeling stretched out on my current journey. I feel like it’s just getting started and I have so much more to learn.
What does purpose mean to you?
For me, the purpose is to work for a cause that is personally worthwhile.
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