DC-based Dorvie, a startup for retirees, is launching in the DMV with the help of a $2.6M seed round

In 2022, we’ve got tech for just about every age group we can think of: kids, parents, teens and everyone in between.

Retired folks, though, typically don’t mix with tech in the same way. Still, DC CEO Hersh Fernandes is betting on this comparatively untapped community with his new startup — to the tune of $2.6 million.

Dorvie, which is based in DC, creates technology for those who are retired but don’t have plans to move into a retirement community. The company created software to help schedule, complete and pay for home services like home maintenance, housekeeping, lawn care and food delivery. The intention,  Fernandes said, is to help people stay in their homes longer by making them more manageable.

Fernandes and his team founded the company earlier this year after working with the CEOs and leadership teams of 13 retirement communities, nursing homes and assisted living facilities. That work helped him realize that many need help organizing home services to remain living independently. The startup just raised $2.6 million from the group of CEOs after launching in DC last month.

Dorvie partners with service providers and negotiates exclusive rates on its home-upkeep services. Its software then takes care of coordinating and scheduling the services and reminds customers that workers are headed to their homes. After completion, customers can pay for the services on Dorvie’s platform in a single bill.

When creating the platform, Fernandes said creating trust within the startup and its partner organizations was crucial.

“Trust is everything,” Fernandes told Technical.ly. “Whether it was a family member of someone who is retiring — a child, for example — or retirees themselves, being able to trust the providers that were in their home was a really key thing.”

Building the platform, Fernandes said, involved developing both backend software to manage its concierge services and a seamless platform that worked for its elderly users (and the children that might be signing up for services on their behalf). The software also manages such information about the Dorvie members as special instructions or preferences from users, as well as their actual financial transactions.

With the fresh funds, Fendandes and his team hope to add more functionality for both adult children and retirees using the platform. He’s also planning on expanding the three-person team, although he declined to say how many positions Dorvie would be adding. On the whole, he’s hoping to grow the company’s technology- and customer-facing sides — especially in a market that he thinks has been overlooked up until now.

The retiree and elderly market, he noted, is one that will keep growing, and everyone should be taking note of it since it’s one we’re all destined to become a part of someday.

“None of us are escaping it,” Fernandes said. “It’s a market that we can’t avoid, right, especially as the trend of more and more and more people wanting to continue living in wherever they call home [continues], it feels like there is this huge opportunity for an integration point of all of these [services].”