Meet the doctor-turned-entrepreneur saving the NHS billions

Jennifer Sieg meets Ben Maruthappu, founder of digital-first home healthcare company Cera, for today’s founder profile to take a look at what the doctor-turned-entrepreneur has learned from his rapid-growing business journey so far.

Psychotherapist Katherine Morgan Schafle once wrote that ‘ambition’ is far from what some would consider a ‘universal trait’, but if you find yourself among the lucky few to possess it, the opportunities are endless.

Ambition is what drove Ben Maruthappu to set up his digital-first home healthcare company Cera in 2016.

Balancing a career as a doctor while caring for his injured 66-year-old mother at home was no easy task, but Maruthappu, who had discovered the UK had a rather concerning lack of time-efficient healthcare options, had the ambition to make it work.

“I saw the difficulties in the sector firsthand, not as a doctor or someone in policy, but as a person going through the process of organising care for a loved one,” Maruthappu, 36, tells Ambition A.M. 

What I realised when I took a closer look at the sector is that people are really well-intentioned – carers, care staff – they want to go above and beyond for the people that they’re caring for, but they’re limited in the tools and by the tools of their organisation.  Ben Maruthappu, founder and chief executive of Cera

With Cera now caring for over 2m patients a month – an average of nearly 60,000 appointments a day – and hitting annualised revenue of £300m, Maruthappu has never seemed so sure of his decision. 

How Cera works 

By partnering with hundreds of UK local authorities and the NHS, Cera works by allowing family members and healthcare providers to collect, monitor and react to a range of vital health signs in real time.

Its AI-driven app has an aim to reduce hospitalisations, ultimately easing the burden on the NHS and saving an estimated £1bn a year by 2026.

“We built an algorithm that can predict 83 per cent of falls a week before they even happen,” Maruthappu says.

“When we rolled out that algorithm within its first two weeks, it cut falls down by 25 per cent. 

“Tools like that allow us to deliver a much better service that wouldn’t be possible without our technology and in turn, gives loved ones and people – like me when I was organising care for my mom – that peace of mind.” 

Growing pains 

Maruthappu might not be the first entrepreneur to turn his personal frustrations into a business solution, but he has been one to help prove that quickly bringing an idea to scale is indeed more than possible. 

As with any degree of scale, however, growing pains are bound to follow. 

“We had to try and build our technology, recruit carers, get our regulatory accreditation, find a larger office space once we hired more people [and] think about how we trained our carers,” Maruthappu says. 

“Everything was done from zero and that was definitely a learning experience.”

But when it comes to entrepreneurial ambition, starting from zero is far from a hurdle. 

Building a team 

Cera now employs 10,000 people and Maruthappu admits scaling the business has been one of the biggest challenges. 

“I’d never built a team, I’d never led a team full-time, I’d never worked in a company full time,” the entrepreneur adds. 

His advice? Understanding the importance of teamwork from the start. 

“It was really clear to me early on that I needed to assemble a team and a great team who could cover off the many areas that I did not know about, otherwise it would be difficult to build a business and to build it quickly,” Maruthappu adds.

“A top responsibility of a founder is to ensure that they have great talent, because if you have great talent and you’ve got a strong mission, everything else will fall into place.” 

Like any good start-up, Cera’s growth shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. 

The next few years will indeed see even more geographical, service, and data expansion come to life, Maruthappu says, with a smile. 

CV

Name: Ben Maruthappu
Company: Cera
Founded: 2016
Staff: c. 10,000
Title: Founder & CEO
Age: 36
Born: London, UK
Lives: London, UK
Studied: Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard University
Talents: I’m a strong believer that motivation, perseverance and passion outweigh talent
Motto: “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” Nelson Mandela
Most known for: Innovation in healthcare
First ambition: To fly a plane
Favourite book: The 4-Hour Work Week, Timothy Ferriss
Best piece of advice: Teamwork makes the dream work