Torchlight
What they do: Provide an online platform that employers can use to support employees that are parents of special needs children or who are caregivers of elderly family members.
Problem they solve: The number of caregivers in the workplace is growing. These employees face the difficult challenge of juggling their caregiving responsibilities at home with their responsibilities at work, especially when those caregiving responsibilities include duties that must be taken care of during working hours. This balancing act takes its toll on employees.
Backed by $3.2 million, Torchlight helps employee caregivers balance work-care responsibilities. #Big50 #startups Share on XMany employees see their work suffer, while others feel compelled to reduce their hours or even quit their jobs to focus on their loved one at home.
According to Torchlight, this challenge is a bigger crisis than most employers realize, with research showing that as many as one in five people are providing informal care to a loved one. This problem costs employers as much as $38 billion per year in lost productivity. And Ceridian reports that 15% of the US workforce spends an average of 29 hours per week on caregiving responsibilities outside of their jobs.
That’s a huge proportion of a workforce that’s struggling to manage their home life and work life at the same time. Employee caregivers need a way to more easily manage their home caregiving duties, so they can focus on their work duties when they’re in the office.
How they solve it: Through their company’s benefits plan, Torchlight provides employees with an online portal that they can access anywhere and at any time to get the information and expertise they need to help them with their special-needs children (including autism, ADD/ADHD, and learning disabilities) and/or elderly loved ones (including Alzheimer’s, financial distress or deteriorating physical health).
Torchlight’s platform provides personalized decision support, action plans, digital tools, and expert private advising sessions. Torchlight currently serves nearly 1,000,000 employees.
Headquarters: Burlington, MA
CEO: Adam Goldberg, M.Ed. Prior to torchlight, Adam co-founded and directed the Goldberg Center for Educational Planning.
Year Founded: 2012
Funding: Torchlight has raised a total of $3.2 million in funding. Their most recent funding, a $1.3 M Series A, closed in February 2017. Investors were not disclosed.
Competitors include: For now, Torchlight occupies a unique niche. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs), which provide caregiving resources for employers who contract with them, are the status quo.
Other startups include Rethink, Hello Envoy, and Welthy, but they all provide indirect competition for the time being.
Customers include: Dell/EMC, TripAdvisor, Accenture, Air Liquide, and Biogen.
Why they’re in the Big 50-2017: Torchlight did well in online voting and the content challenge. The startup also raised their Series A round during the competition, and they’ve scaled up quickly enough to already serve 1,000,000 employee caregivers. Torchlight has a big enough head start that we believe they could dominate this niche for years to come.
