1. Lottie: the UK’s number one startup for 2025

Founders: Chris Donnelly and Will Donnelly
Year founded: 2021
Website: lottie.org

Last April, the Carer’s Leave Act 2024 allowed UK employees looking after long-term sick, disabled or elderly loved ones time off work to do so. It was one of the most radical steps taken so far to support staff with caring responsibilities. It was also, effectively, a stopgap.

Truthfully, the UK cannot rely on unpaid carers to disguise a broken system. Demand for elderly care services is soaring, but finding high quality, affordable care homes remains a Herculean task. 44% of UK care seekers end up regretting their choice. While an extra week’s leave is welcome, a truly innovative solution will be required to really move the dial.

Lottie, our most disruptive startup for 2025, is that solution. It was launched by brothers Chris and Will Donnelly in 2021 after they struggled to find suitable care for their Nan. Yet, what began as an analogy (‘Rightmove for care homes’), has since become a multi-pronged, peerless approach to revolutionise the care industry.

The startup’s core service offering is the Lottie marketplace, where families can find carefully vetted care homes, retirement living, and (as of October 2023) at-home care services online.

Crucially, they can also use this platform to compare care fees. Residential care can cost thousands a week. Yet for a service that can bankrupt customers, opaque pay practices still persist, and plans for reform via an £86k a year ‘care cap’ were scrapped last year.

So many care seekers are unsure about what makes a good care home or even where to start.

Fee transparency was one inadequacy the Donnellys spotted in those early days. But the more they delved into the stagnant later life sector, the more they saw that needed changing.

Today, the startup is a Jack of all trades. Alongside the marketplace, there’s Found by Lottie, a CRM software for providers, Seniorcare by Lottie, an employee benefits platform, and Care IQ, a data insights tool offering invaluable information about the elderly care market.

Lottie has been on Startups’ radar since back in 2021, when we first featured the startup in our ‘Just Started’ section. At the time, its cofounders said their breakthrough moment was “placing our first customer into one of our partner homes”.

Four years later, things look a little different. Lottie now supports over one million people to find care every month, having tripled its customer base in 12 months, and is partnered with 3,000 care providers across the UK (over 100 of which were onboarded last year alone).

That exceptional growth has led the company to our number one spot. Lottie came in eighth in the 2023 Startups 100 Index, and last year placed runner-up.

We want to make as much noise as possible to disrupt the social care sector for the better.

We can’t keep the secret much longer. Lottie is quickly becoming a household name (you might have seen its care home residents recreate Taylor Swift’s most iconic album covers in May). These marketing efforts aren’t about finding fame, though. Lottie’s leaders recognise that a large part of fixing the care system is making it more accessible for care seekers.

“Most first-time care choices are often made urgently and under high-pressure situations,” say the brothers. “But the system as a whole can be confusing to understand — so many care seekers are unsure about what makes a good care home or even where to start.”

In fact, helping care seekers to fully understand that system is Lottie’s next goal. In 2024, it launched the largest Care Seeker Survey in the UK, surveying 1,000 care seekers to reveal the state of care in the UK and what the search process is like for families.

Once gathered, it will use these customer insights to improve its own business model. But the learnings will also help Lottie to raise further awareness. “We want to make as much noise as possible to disrupt the social care sector for the better,” the founders tell Startups.

Lottie’s ambitions extend beyond the UK. It next plans to go global, expanding into India, Australia, and the US. To do so, it has built up a tidy holiday fund for itself, having raised £25m in total so far, including a £16.3m Series A funding round in 2023.

It might already be an established player in the game, but Lottie isn’t slowing down soon. “We’re only at the beginning of our journey as a startup,” say the founders.

No more endless phone calls or frustrating visits. Lottie is disrupting the antiquated eldercare system by arming families with the tools they need to make informed decisions. Back for its third appearance, Lottie is our top startup for 2025, and breathing life back into later life care.