Lottie

Lottie operates a UK online marketplace and search platform for later life care, covering care homes, home care and retirement living properties available to rent or buy. Families can search by location and care type (residential, dementia, nursing, respite, hourly, live-in and overnight care), filter by budget and requirements such as pet-friendliness, see which services currently have availability, and request detailed pricing for every listed service. Alongside the listings, Lottie publishes care and retirement guides and runs a free Care Support service, staffed by care experts available 9am-6pm Monday to Friday, which produces personalised shortlists, handles urgent care requests and advises on how care is funded. Entry to the marketplace is conditional: providers are vetted against an internal scoring system referred to as "The Lottie Standard", which weighs Care Quality Commission ratings by category, facilities, homely environment and external customer reviews, and requires transparency on fees; providers without availability or that decline to disclose fees are not listed.

Beyond the consumer marketplace, the company has built a set of B2B products for the eldercare sector. Found by Lottie is CRM and occupancy software for care home operators, handling real-time availability and payment processing; Seniorcare by Lottie is an eldercare employee benefits product sold to employers; and Care IQ, launched in May 2022, is a proprietary data insights tool serving real estate investors and lenders in the UK and Europe. Lottie also runs Care Space, an online support group for carers, and offers partners ancillary services such as data services, professional photography and virtual tours. Consumer demand is also served through a WhatsApp-based search entry point.

The business was co-founded in July 2021 by brothers Will Donnelly (CEO) and Chris Donnelly. As of January 2025 it described a marketplace covering all three core elderly care types after adding a home care marketplace in October 2023, and stated plans to expand internationally into India, Australia and the United States.

Founding story

Will Donnelly spent over five years (described elsewhere as a six-year career) advising leading UK care and retirement operators and worked on the property team supporting the NHS during the COVID-19 pandemic, where he encountered an offline, fragmented and underfunded sector with little consumer transparency. After the brothers struggled to find suitable care for their grandmother, and following customer surveys showing families contacted on average six services before finding a high-quality provider within budget, Will and his brother Chris Donnelly - previously founder and CEO of digital agency Verb Brands - combined social care and technology experience to launch Lottie in July 2021. Will moved back in with his parents at 25 and took out a GBP 10,000 loan to fund the first six months. The name was chosen to be human and personal; Charlotte is a recurring name across generations of the Donnelly family, shortened to 'Lottie'.

Business model

Two-sided: the consumer service is free to families and retirees, while vetted care and retirement providers pay Lottie advertising or per-enquiry fees when a qualified care seeker is connected to their service, a model the company compares to Tripadvisor or Skyscanner. Additional revenue comes from software and data products sold to providers, employers and investors (Found, Seniorcare, Care IQ) and from optional partner services such as data services, photography and virtual tours.

Providers pay per qualified enquiry or an advertising fee for connections to care seekers; families pay nothing. Management has stated an intention for the bulk of revenue to come from Found, its operating software for senior care providers, which covers real-time availability management and payment processing, alongside Seniorcare employee benefits and Care IQ data subscriptions/projects.

Traction

Reported metrics vary by source and date: about 20,000 care seekers matched with providers each month (2024); over one million people supported to find care each month with the customer base tripled in 12 months and 3,000 partnered UK care providers, over 100 onboarded in the prior year (January 2025); 5,000 partners onboarded and over 20 million families helped to understand, find or fund later life care (January 2025); and over 4,000 verified communities and providers on the marketplace per the company's own site. Care IQ has supported over 20 clients on confidential projects covering more than GBP 1 billion of deal activity, including M&A and operational performance reviews. The company says thousands of residents have been placed into partner care homes with a move-out rate it describes as very low against an industry figure of 44% of care seekers regretting their care home choice.

Latest developments

In January 2025 Lottie was named winner of the 2025 Startups 100 Index. Founders reported having raised GBP 25 million in total, said the customer base had tripled over 12 months, and outlined plans to expand into India, Australia and the United States. Recent product additions include the home care marketplace and continued build-out of Found, Seniorcare and Care IQ. Founders publicly criticised the timetable of UK adult social care reforms announced in early 2025, which are not set to begin until 2028.