Spanish telecare start-up Durcal raises €3 million to expand into Italy

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Durcal, a Spanish telecare start-up that offers a smartwatch in place of the traditional emergency pendant, has closed a €3 million round. The new lead backer is Adrián Cheb Terrab, chief executive of Brava Investments Management Corp., who joins existing shareholders including Atresmedia and Prosegur and is also taking the chief financial officer job. The money is meant for a bigger team, product and technology work, more AI, and growth abroad. It follows an €8 million round in May 2022 from Telefónica Ventures, Mangrove, KFund, Prosegur Tech Ventures, Aldea Ventures and Atresmedia, among others, so the cheques have got smaller as the ambitions have got wider.

The company says it serves more than 16,000 families and handles about 300 emergencies a month in Spain. Its technology started with Alpify, a 2013 app for finding lost hikers and climbers that passed a million downloads; founder Guillem Viladomat pointed it at older people living alone after his grandfather died. Italy, which shares Spain's ageing population, is the first foreign market, and the platform was built to work in several languages and connect to local alarm-receiving centres and connectivity operators without starting over. Latin America comes later, through local partners. Chief executive Fran Lucena said Durcal is talking to companies in several countries there but would not name countries or dates until agreements are signed.

The other aim is to make telecare proactive. The traditional version mostly waits for a fall or a button press, a dependable model that tends to arrive slightly after the problem. Durcal's watch has an SOS button, continuous GPS, a microphone and speaker for calls, medication reminders and pulse and blood-oxygen sensors, backed by a 24-hour service run in Spain with the Movistar Prosegur Alarmas emergency centre, plus a free family app. The company uses AI to spot changes in habits and vital signs, improve emergency detection and run its own processes, and says further features are in the works that it cannot yet disclose. Data is encrypted and kept on EU servers, and Durcal says it is in the last steps toward ISO 9001, the UNE 158401 telecare standard and Spain's National Security Scheme (ENS) certification.