Lifted Talent
A recruitment platform connecting UK social care providers with care workers for home-care roles.
Website: https://www.lifted-talent.com/
Cover Block
PUBLIC
| Name | Lifted Talent |
| Tagline | A recruitment platform connecting UK social care providers with care workers for home-care roles. |
| Headquarters | London, UK |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | Western Europe |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding Label | Seed (total disclosed ~$3,930,000) |
Links
PUBLIC
- Website: https://www.lifted-talent.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/liftedtalent
- App Store: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lifted-talent/id1561951378
- Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lifted.talent
Executive Summary
PUBLIC Lifted Talent is a recruitment platform that addresses a persistent staffing crisis in UK social care by connecting care providers with qualified workers, a model that benefits from its integration with an established home-care operator. The company, founded in 2018, operates as a product line of Lifted (Better Home Care Services Limited), a technology-enabled home-care provider [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. Its founding team, Rachael Crook and Sam Cohen, launched the venture with backgrounds in strategy consulting and operations, motivated by personal experience with the challenges of arranging care [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. The core product offers 'Sponsored Recruitment' services to care providers, aiming to streamline hiring and onboarding while also serving as the internal recruitment engine for Lifted's own care operations [lifted-talent.com, retrieved 2024].
Funding for the venture is consolidated at the parent company level, with Lifted having raised a total of approximately £3.1 million (estimated $3.93M USD) by early 2020 through a seed round led by Fuel Ventures and earlier angel capital [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. The business model is B2B, charging care providers for recruitment services, though specific pricing and revenue figures for the Lifted Talent platform are not publicly broken out. Over the next 12-18 months, the key watchpoints are the platform's ability to demonstrate scaled adoption beyond its parent company's internal needs and any moves to secure dedicated funding or partnerships that would signal its evolution as a standalone software business within the care ecosystem.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Core company details, funding rounds, and product claims are confirmed by investor announcements and the company's own website.
Taxonomy Snapshot
| Axis | Classification |
|---|---|
| Stage | Seed |
| Business Model | B2B |
| Industry / Vertical | HR / Future of Work |
| Technology Type | Software (Non-AI) |
| Geography | Western Europe |
| Growth Profile | Venture Scale |
| Founding Team | Co-Founders (2) |
| Funding | Seed (total disclosed ~$3,930,000) |
Company Overview
PUBLIC
Lifted Talent is a recruitment platform for the UK social care sector, but its origins are inseparable from its parent company, Lifted. The platform was launched as a product line of Better Home Care Services Limited, a London-based home-care startup founded in 2018 by Rachael Crook and Sam Cohen [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. The founding team combined strategy consulting and social-impact experience with personal motivation; Cohen's experience arranging care for his grandmother informed the product direction [Fuel Ventures, February 2020][liftedcare.com, retrieved 2026]. The company's early thesis was to build a technology-enabled home-care service, with the recruitment of care workers as a critical, internal operational function. Lifted Talent emerged from this need, initially serving to staff Lifted's own care operations before being offered as a standalone service to other providers.
Key financial milestones are reported at the parent company level. In September 2019, Lifted raised £1.5 million in seed funding [TechCrunch, September 2019]. This was followed by a further £1.6 million seed round led by Fuel Ventures in February 2020, which brought the company's total disclosed capital raised to approximately £3.1 million (estimated $3.93M USD) [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. The company has also secured a government grant of £1.65 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) [Tech Funding News, Unknown]. More recent filings for the parent entity, Better Home Care Services Limited, show an EBITDA of £36,600 for 2024 [UK.GlobalDatabase.com, 2024].
The company's operational scale has grown alongside its funding. Public reports indicate Lifted employs over 100 people [UK Care Week, Unknown]. While Lifted Talent is the brand for its recruitment services, all public legal and financial records, including app store listings for the Lifted Talent mobile applications, point back to the single corporate entity, Better Home Care Services Limited, trading as Lifted [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. This structure indicates Lifted Talent is not a separate, venture-backed spin-out but an integrated business unit.
Data Accuracy: GREEN -- Confirmed by Crunchbase, company website, investor announcements, and corporate filings.
Product and Technology
MIXED Lifted Talent operates a specialized recruitment platform for the UK social care sector, a product line of the parent home-care company Lifted. The core offering is a two-sided marketplace connecting care providers with job-seeking carers, delivered through a web platform and mobile applications [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. The primary monetized service for business customers is "Sponsored Recruitment," where care providers pay to have their vacancies promoted and candidates sourced [lifted-talent.com, retrieved 2024]. For the supply side, the platform assists individual carers with the practicalities of relocation, including visa support, accommodation, and arranging a driving licence [App Store, Unknown].
- Product wedge. The platform's most distinctive feature is its operational integration with its parent company. Lifted Talent recruits carers for Lifted's own home-care operations, providing a built-in, captive customer that validates the service before it is sold to external providers [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. This creates a functional wedge into the broader market.
- Technology stack. The company's technology is described as a software platform enabling matching, application, and onboarding. The existence of dedicated iOS and Android apps published by Better Home Care Services Limited confirms a mobile-first approach for the carer user base [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. Public materials emphasize helping providers "recruit, onboard, and stay compliant," suggesting the platform includes features for managing right-to-work checks and other regulatory documentation [lifted-talent.com, retrieved 2024].
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Product features are confirmed by the company's own website and app store listings. The integration with the parent company's operations is a logical inference from corporate structure and public descriptions, but the specific technical architecture and backend stack are not detailed in primary sources.
Market Research
PUBLIC The UK's social care sector is defined by a structural labor shortage, a condition that has turned recruitment technology from a convenience into a critical operational tool for providers.
A precise TAM for the niche of UK care-worker recruitment platforms is not published in the company's cited materials. However, the scale of the underlying labor market provides context. The adult social care workforce in England alone was estimated at approximately 1.5 million people in 2023, with a vacancy rate persistently above 8% [Skills for Care, 2023]. This translates to over 120,000 unfilled roles at any given time, creating a substantial SAM for services aimed at filling them. The broader UK health and social care staffing market, which includes temporary and permanent placement fees, is a multi-billion pound segment, though Lifted Talent's focus on permanent home-care roles represents a narrower slice.
Demand is driven by demographic inevitability and policy pressure. The UK's population aged 75 and over is projected to grow by over 40% in the next two decades, directly increasing demand for home-based care services [Office for National Statistics]. Concurrently, government initiatives like the £500 million 'Care Workforce Pathway' fund aim to improve recruitment and retention, creating a tailwind for solutions that can demonstrate efficacy [UK Department of Health and Social Care, 2023]. The cited research positions Lifted's model as a response to these macro forces, leveraging technology to address the sector's high turnover and administrative burden.
The primary adjacent market is generalist digital job boards and recruitment software (e.g., Indeed, Totaljobs, Bullhorn). These represent substitutes but lack the sector-specific filters, compliance features, and candidate pools that specialized platforms like Lifted Talent market. A more direct adjacent market is international recruitment, as the UK care sector increasingly relies on overseas workers; Lifted Talent's listed service to assist with visas and accommodation suggests it is positioning to capture this segment [App Store].
Regulatory forces are a defining characteristic of the operating environment. The sector is governed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), which mandates specific training, background checks, and right-to-work verification for all carers. Any recruitment platform must integrate these compliance steps to be viable, creating a barrier to entry for generalist players but a core feature for specialized ones. Macro forces include public sector funding constraints for local authority-commissioned care, which pressures provider margins and makes cost-effective recruitment paramount.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Adult Social Care Workforce (England 2023) | 1.5 million |
| Estimated Vacancy Rate (2023) | 8.2 % |
| Projected Vacancies (calculated) | 123 thousand |
The chart, derived from sector body reporting, quantifies the persistent labor gap that forms the core market problem. The vacancy number, while a calculation, underscores the volume of placements required just to maintain current service levels, before accounting for future demand growth.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Market sizing context is drawn from third-party sector reports (Skills for Care, ONS). Specific TAM for the company's niche is not publicly detailed.
Competitive Landscape
MIXED Lifted Talent operates in a specialized niche of recruitment technology, positioned as an integrated solution for the UK's social care staffing crisis rather than a general-purpose job board. The competitive map is fragmented, with distinct segments defined by their relationship to the care sector.
Direct, sector-specific competitors are not named in public sources, but the landscape can be segmented into three categories. First, traditional recruitment agencies and consultancies that focus on health and social care, such as Hays Specialist Recruitment or specialist firms like Care Recruitment UK. These incumbents offer human-led placement services but typically lack a dedicated, scalable software platform. Second, generalist online job boards like Indeed or Totaljobs, which have massive reach but offer no specialization for the compliance-heavy, credential-sensitive process of vetting care workers. Third, and most relevant, are emerging vertical software platforms for healthcare staffing. While no direct UK-based competitor to Lifted Talent is cited, the model parallels US-based platforms like ShiftKey (which connects healthcare facilities with licensed professionals) or UK-based Florence (which connects nurses and carers with shifts), though Florence focuses more on shift-booking than permanent recruitment.
Lifted Talent's defensible edge today is its tight integration with its parent company's home-care operations. The platform's initial "wedge" was recruiting for Lifted's own care services, providing immediate, real-world validation of its matching efficacy and a built-in first customer. This operational data on candidate quality and retention is a perishable advantage, however, as it is only truly defensible if it translates into a superior algorithm or compliance engine that third-party providers cannot replicate. The company's other edge is its focus on the full recruitment journey, including assistance with visas and accommodation for international carers, a complex service layer that generalist platforms avoid. This creates a higher barrier to entry but also limits scalability to the specific, high-touch UK care immigration pathway.
The company is most exposed in two areas. It lacks the brand recognition and marketing budgets of the generalist job boards, which could outspend it for candidate attention. More critically, its model is inherently tied to the fortunes and strategic focus of its parent company, Lifted. Should the parent company's home-care business face operational or financial pressure, the Talent platform's development and sales resources could be diverted, leaving it vulnerable to a pure-play software competitor that is fully dedicated to the recruitment problem. There is also no public evidence of technology partnerships with major HR or payroll systems, a potential integration gap that more established workforce management platforms could exploit.
The most plausible 18-month competitive scenario hinges on market fragmentation versus consolidation. If the UK government increases funding or regulatory support for care recruitment technology, a well-capitalized, adjacent player like a healthcare-focused SaaS company could enter and rapidly acquire share. In that case, the "winner" would be a platform with deeper enterprise sales reach into NHS trusts or large care groups. Conversely, if the market remains challenging and capital-constrained, the "loser" would be any standalone, venture-backed niche player without a profitable core business. Lifted Talent's integration with a revenue-generating care service provides a crucial buffer, making it more likely to endure a downturn than a pure software startup burning cash on customer acquisition.
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- Competitive analysis is inferred from market structure; no direct competitors are named in captured sources.
Opportunity
PUBLIC The prize for Lifted Talent is a foundational role in the UK's social care staffing ecosystem, a market where persistent labor shortages create acute demand for efficient recruitment solutions. If the platform can transition from a captive recruiting arm into a widely adopted marketplace, it could capture significant recurring revenue from care providers while building a durable data advantage.
The headline opportunity is for Lifted Talent to become the default, two-sided staffing marketplace for UK social care. This outcome is reachable because the company already possesses the core operational wedge: its parent company, Lifted, is itself a home-care provider that consumes the platform's services. This internal demand validates the product and funds its initial development, a dynamic cited in investor materials [Fuel Ventures, February 2020]. The platform's focus on 'Sponsored Recruitment' for external providers [lifted-talent.com, retrieved 2024] indicates the strategic intent to scale beyond internal use. The outcome is not merely building another job board, but establishing the primary conduit through which care providers source and onboard a critical, mobile workforce.
Growth could follow several distinct, concrete paths. The scenarios below outline how the company might achieve scale.
| Scenario | What happens | Catalyst | Why it's plausible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vertical Marketplace Dominance | Lifted Talent becomes the dominant platform for all temporary and permanent care staffing in the UK, moving beyond recruitment into scheduling, compliance, and payroll. | A major contract with a national care provider chain or a local authority procurement win. | The platform already assists with visa, accommodation, and compliance logistics [App Store, Unknown], showing a move into adjacent services. The parent company's operational scale (100+ employees [UK Care Week, Unknown]) provides a real-world testbed. |
| Embedded Recruitment for Regional Authorities | The platform is white-labeled or embedded into the procurement systems of local government bodies responsible for social care funding. | A successful pilot with one UK county council, leading to a framework agreement. | Public records show the parent company has secured government grant funding [Tech Funding News, Unknown], demonstrating an ability to navigate public-sector channels. The acute staffing crisis in publicly-funded care creates a strong incentive for innovation. |
| International Carer Pipeline | The company systematizes the recruitment and relocation of care workers from abroad, becoming the primary gateway for international talent entering the UK care sector. | A strategic partnership with a large international recruitment agency or a visa sponsorship license. | The platform's stated assistance with visas and relocation [App Store, Unknown] targets this specific friction point. The UK's post-Brexit immigration policies have created formal routes for care workers, structuring a market for compliant intermediaries. |
Compounding for Lifted Talent would manifest as a classic two-sided network effect, reinforced by data. Each new care provider on the platform increases the inventory of jobs, attracting more care workers. Conversely, a larger, more qualified pool of workers makes the platform more effective for providers, improving match quality and reducing time-to-fill. This flywheel is hinted at by the platform's dual-sided nature, serving both providers and workers [Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief]. Over time, the data generated on candidate success, retention rates, and regional demand could create a significant moat, allowing Lifted Talent to predict staffing needs and optimize matches in ways a new entrant could not replicate.
The size of the win can be contextualized by the scale of the underlying problem. While no specific market sizing for UK care staffing tech is cited in available sources, the financial scale of the parent company offers a proximate benchmark. Lifted reported an EBITDA of £36,600 for 2024 [UK.GlobalDatabase.com, 2024] while employing over 100 people [UK Care Week, Unknown]. A successful, scaled marketplace operating at even a single-digit percentage take-rate of the UK's billions in annual care staffing spend would represent a valuation multiple of that current operational footprint. In a bullish scenario where the platform captures a leading share of the external recruitment market, the business could support a valuation an order of magnitude larger than the parent company's current operational entity (scenario, not a forecast).
Data Accuracy: YELLOW -- The core opportunity thesis is supported by cited product claims and investor statements. Specific growth catalysts and the scale of the win are extrapolated from the company's current positioning and the known dynamics of the care sector, rather than from confirmed partnerships or market data.
Sources
PUBLIC
[Fuel Ventures, February 2020] Lifted raises £1.6 million from Fuel Ventures to solve home care crisis | https://www.fuel.ventures/introducing-lifted
[TechCrunch, September 2019] Social care startup Lifted raises £1.5M for end-to-end elderly care platform | https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/social-care-startup-lifted-raises-1-5m-for-end-to-end-elderly-care-platform/
[lifted-talent.com, retrieved 2024] Sponsored Recruitment for UK Care Providers without the hassle | https://www.lifted-talent.com/
[App Store, Unknown] Lifted Talent App Store Listing | https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/lifted-talent/id1561951378
[Perplexity Sonar Pro Brief] Lifted Talent Research Brief | https://www.perplexity.ai/
[liftedcare.com, retrieved 2026] Lifted Care Company Information | https://liftedcare.com/
[UK.GlobalDatabase.com, 2024] Better Home Care Services Limited Financials | https://uk.globaldatabase.com/
[UK Care Week, Unknown] Lifted Company Profile | https://ukcareweek.com/
[Tech Funding News, Unknown] Lifted Secures UKRI Grant | https://techfundingnews.com/
[Skills for Care, 2023] The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England | https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/
[Office for National Statistics] National population projections | https://www.ons.gov.uk/
[UK Department of Health and Social Care, 2023] Care Workforce Pathway | https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/
Articles about Lifted Talent
- Lifted Talent's 100+ Staff and £9 Million in Funding Anchor a Bet on the UK Care Worker Shortage — The recruitment platform, built inside a home-care provider, is now selling its staffing engine to other agencies.