Wellthy acquires Cleo in bid to become ‘singular platform for family care’

Wellthy, a caregiving provider with services including backup care, is acquiring Cleo, which provides a range of support for caregivers at different stages of their lives.

Both companies have been around for a decade or more, and together count companies including Meta, Hilton, PepsiCo, and Salesforce as customers.

Around 120 Cleo employees will join Wellthy as part of the acquisition, bringing the acquiring company’s headcount to about 500.

This acquisition comes at a time when employees are struggling to secure the right care for their loved ones due to ongoing shortages in the caregiving market, the CEOs of Wellthy and Cleo told HR Brew. What’s more, employers may rely on a patchwork of point solutions to support workers with caregiving needs, which can create friction as workers try to access the right support.

With the merger, the two companies hope to address these gaps in support, they told us.

“When you have so many different solutions supporting a single family…you miss what’s happening in totality with that family unit,” Madhavi Vemireddy, CEO of Cleo, said.

“Wellthy and Cleo coming together really allows us to not only support all of those family needs, but also make sure we’re driving the best health outcomes for the caregiver and the care recipient by having that full view of what’s happening with that family,” she continued.

The strategy behind the partnership. Wellthy, which was founded in 2014, started as a platform for caregivers who needed “complex care,” according to CEO Lindsay Jurist-Rosner. Typical users might include caregivers of parents dealing with an aging-related diagnosis, such as Alzheimer’s or dementia; those whose children have been diagnosed with a developmental disability or genetic condition; or employees who are dealing with a difficult diagnosis themselves.

Wellthy is focused on “the non-clinical aspects of care,” Jurist-Rosner said. “It’s the stuff that happens outside of the clinical setting in the home that really takes up the bulk of families’ time and money, and really results in quite a bit of stress,” she said. The platform features tools that help users communicate directly with their care team, which may include social workers or home health aides, and stay on top of organizational tasks related to caregiving.

More recently, around the pandemic, Wellthy expanded into backup care services; last October it acquired Patch Caregiving to bolster these offerings. Backup care represents Wellthy’s biggest growth area today, according to Jurist-Rosner.

Cleo started as a pregnancy support platform when it was founded in 2016, according to Vemireddy. Today, Cleo’s focus is more expansive, as it seeks to support “families across all stages of life,” she said. In 2022 it acquired CareTribe, a separate company that Vemireddy cofounded, with an eye toward serving members of the “sandwich generation,” i.e. those who are caring for children and aging parents at the same time. Vemireddy said Cleo tries to address the ways that caregivers’ own health and well-being may be affected by their responsibilities, screening for conditions such as anxiety and depression, and connecting them with mental health resources when appropriate.

The goal of bringing these two companies together is to provide “best-in-class, end-to-end family care support,” Jurist-Rosner said.

HR’s role supporting caregivers. There’s no doubt that employers have become more attuned to how caregiving responsibilities put a strain on the workforce in recent years. Research from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) points to the ways that caregiving-related strains can show up in the workplace, prompting employees to reduce their hours, take leaves of absence, or even drop out of the workforce altogether.

Still, many companies struggle to offer benefits that meet the needs of caregivers. Large shares of working parents reported they lack access to benefits that would help them most, such as paid leave and flexible working arrangements, according to a Pew Research survey fielded in March.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of caregiving solutions on the market, if companies have the funds and leadership backing to offer them. Cariloop, Family First, and Homethrive are among the vendors offering similar services to Wellthy and Cleo.

Jurist-Rosner recognized that investing in a new benefit can be a hard sell for companies dealing with tight budgets, but suggested the Wellthy x Cleo platform may provide better value for employers that have already allocated funds for backup care, anyway.

“I don’t think any employer out there is looking to add more line items,” she said. “We’re not asking employers to go find new dollars. We’re asking them to put their current backup care provider up for bid and survey the market and see if there’s a solution out there that can meet their needs.” She posited that the platform’s “wraparound support” for a wide range of caregivers will set it apart from other legacy solutions.