Team I-Care A startup founded by a group of Columbia students who participated in the Business School’s prestigious Innovation and Entrepreneurship @ Columbia (IE @ Columbia) program has been recognized by the Global Public Policy Network (GPPN) for its data-driven approach to solving the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. I-Care — founded by Xinwei Gao ’17SIPA with Fang Liu ’17SIPA, Seungwook Kim ’17SIPA, Sihan Zhang ’17SIPA, and Yue Wang ’17PH — beat out 31 other teams to win the competition at the GPPN Conference in Paris last month. GPPN is an alliance of seven global public-policy schools that provides a platform for institutional partnership, research collaboration, and student exchange. “[Winning this competition] was encouragement and confirmation from people that this idea would work,” said Gao. “It has really encouraged us to move forward with the idea.” I-Care uses technology and medical data to match disabled senior citizens with local professional caregivers who have the corresponding experience and training. The startup also provides online training courses for both professional caregivers as well as family members who are stepping into a caregiving role for loved ones. “It actually started because of my grandmother,” Gao said of her initial idea for the service. Based in Beijing, Gao’s late grandmother had Alzheimer’s disease and was being cared for in a nursing home. “She passed away without her family around her,” explained Gao, who immediately thought there must be a better way to care for older adults with special needs. According to the China Research Centre on Aging, there are over 200 million elderly in China — with some reports estimating that figure will swell to 300 million by 2025 — and 40 million of them are disabled, Gao says. Therefore, the market for a service like I-Care is already huge in the country, and it is only expected to grow as people live longer and the demographic skews older due to the nation’s former one-child policy, which has resulted in fewer adults in the 15-to-59 age bracket and therefore fewer family members who are available to serve as caregivers. I-Care is currently targeting the Chinese market, with an initial rollout planned for Beijing; but Gao added that with the world’s population living longer in general, the global market for I-Care is ever expanding. Gao and her team developed the idea for the startup by participating in the IE @ Columbia program, which provides students with access to the cross-functional capabilities, knowledge, and intellectual capacity of the University at large. Teams that are accepted into the program spend every Friday throughout the semester developing their businesses with help from advisors, including faculty members, experts, and investors. “We feel very strongly that she has an idea that is very viable,” said Professor Cliff Schorer, who co-directs the IE @ Columbia program with Professor Murray Low. “She’s really thought through a market that I think has real potential. I have a feeling the business can grow very, very quickly and be very, very successful.” Further, winning the GPPN competition “means a tremendous amount to the business,” Schorer added. “This would be a great lever to move things forward.”