Maurice & Nora Raises €1M for Care Tech Platform

Antwerp-based social enterprise Maurice & Nora has successfully closed a €1 million funding round, signaling a significant push to scale its innovative platform connecting individuals with non-medical in-home assistance. The investment, which saw participation from a notable group of investors including Coformaco (led by Conny Vandendriessche), Dries Buytaert, 100IN, Annemie Colruyt & Stef Goossens, Jan Delaere, Lorenz Bogaert, Toon Coppens, Piet Maes, Roeland Delrue, and the Shaping Impact Si3 Fund, will fuel commercial growth and technological advancement.

The company addresses a growing societal need for flexible, reliable support services, particularly for seniors and families. Maurice & Nora facilitates connections between students seeking flexible work and users requiring assistance with daily tasks. For seniors, this can range from grocery shopping and companionship to light household chores. Families leverage the platform for childcare support, including after-school care and holiday assistance, as well as help with cooking and transportation. This dual focus on providing essential services and creating meaningful employment opportunities for students positions the company as a key player in the social impact sector.

At the heart of Maurice & Nora's operation is a proprietary digital platform that employs AI-driven matching to efficiently connect service providers with those in need. This technological backbone has been instrumental in the company's rapid development since its inception one year ago. During this period, Maurice & Nora has screened over 3,000 students across Flanders and Brussels, successfully onboarded more than 2,000 families and seniors, and established over 10 business-to-business client relationships, offering its services as an employee benefit.

The platform's evolution includes sophisticated screening processes, seamless matching capabilities, dedicated mobile applications, and integrated communication tools. Further enhancing its service delivery and scalability, the company has integrated an AI voice agent designed to streamline scheduling and manage customer interactions. This commitment to leveraging technology, including advanced AI and voice capabilities, underscores their ambition to make non-medical assistance as accessible and user-friendly as digital services like ride-sharing or food delivery, while maintaining a core emphasis on human connection.

Thomas Butstraen, co-founder and CEO of Maurice & Nora, highlighted the strong market demand observed over the past year for dependable and adaptable support solutions. "Our ambition is to make non-medical assistance as easy and accessible as ordering a meal or a taxi online, but with a genuine human connection at its core," stated Butstraen. "We want to build a company that combines tangible social impact with strong economic growth." This vision is supported by the company's hybrid model, serving both individual consumers and corporate clients seeking to enhance their employee benefits packages.

The newly acquired capital injection is earmarked for strategic expansion. Key areas of investment include bolstering sales and marketing efforts, forging new partnerships, and enhancing the platform's technological infrastructure. This includes further development of its AI matching algorithms, expanding voice technology functionalities, and ensuring enterprise-level scalability to accommodate future growth. With plans to grow its team and operations, Maurice & Nora is setting its sights on broader European market penetration in the long term, tapping into a global market for home care services projected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years.