The longterm growth metrics of Australia’s aged care sector have been well documented.

And that demand outlook is a catalyst for a number of tech companies to bring new products to market with the aim of achieving more efficient solutions.

One competitor in the space, Intelicare, now plans to tap public markets to fund the next stage of growth for its sensor-based home monitoring system.

It comes in the wake of a private cap raise last year where the company found strong demand from sophisticated investors.

Perth-based Intelicare started product development in 2016 with a $500,000 grant from the WA government. The end result was a patented home-monitoring solution that tracks movement patterns and provides access and data analysis for families and carers.

After booking its first sales in 2019, the company brought on Jason Waller as CEO last August to execute on the next phase of its expansion strategy.

Waller previously headed aerial-mapping company Spookfish, which was subsequently sold to US company EagleView Technologies in a $US90m ($134.5m) deal at the end of 2018.

Speaking with Stockhead, Waller discussed why Intelicare was suited to a public listing at this stage of its growth phase.

More broadly, Waller cited the buoyant state of the market given the interest in the combination of aged care and AI technology.

Intelicare’s management team is currently fronting local investors on its pre-IPO roadshow. It follows a tour of North America by the company’s corporate advisory team, which drew “a lot of interest from risk capital”, Waller said.

“Based on that interest and to ensure we had the right capital structure, we decided it was better to conduct a public listing.”

Intelicare is confident its IPO raise will be underpinned by one or two cornerstone investors, who will take a longterm view of the broader market trend.

“In my experience that can prove very positive for a company — to have investors that stand beside you as you continue to grow,” Waller said.

“They understand you have ups and downs as you go through an innovation and early adopter stage until you get to the real momentum phase.

“There’s a number of funds in Australia now that have a focus towards that risk profile. We see a lot of liquidity and availability of funds in Australia that didn’t used to exist.”

He added that the public markets provided a more efficient platform to raise further funds from key investment partners as the company grew.

Strategy-wise, Waller said one aspect of Intelicare’s product offering that set it apart from competitors was the ability to operate in both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) distribution channels.

But at this stage, the company is prioritising B2B — such as aged care residential facilities — for “a couple of reasons”.

“The first is because that’s where we’ve established traction and that’s where we can dedicate our direct sales efforts to achieve immediate revenue growth,” Waller said.

“It makes sense from a product development side that we partner with those groups. Rather than aim for lots of individual sales where we need to respond very quickly to 1,000 queries, we can respond to one query.

“It’s important to get it right working with a smaller number of customers, and from that we’ll develop our off-the-shelf product.”

Waller added that in addition to its B2B sales channels the company was also booking revenue from retail customers.

However, “we’re not at the position where we could scale that in orders of magnitude. We need to automate the user experience, and part of our use of funds from the IPO will be deployed towards that”, he said.

In summary, Waller said the company was making it clear to investors that it was no longer an R&D play. That groundwork has been done and the intellectual property has been developed.

“We’re presenting as a post-revenue company that has proven technology,” Waller said.

“Therefore its about executing on product development and executing on sales growth. What you’re really investing in is the right team, and with my background and our technical team in place I’m confident in the strength of our human capital.

“At that point, investors will look back and say — well these guys have delivered on everything they’ve promised, so it should leave us with good faith that the team can execute from this point forward.”

After meeting with investors, Intelicare expects to have its prospectus lodged with the ASX early in the June quarter.