Cera

Dr Ben Maruthappu and Marek Sacha are the founding duo behind London-based health-tech company Cera Care. Maruthappu (also known as Mahiben Maruthappu) is a British physician and researcher who, frustrated by the complexity of arranging high-quality home care when his mother sustained a back injury, set out to redesign how care is delivered. He studied at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard, and had already been advising the UK NHS on innovation and health economics.

Sacha is a Czech-British entrepreneur who studied at the Czech Technical University in Prague and Johannes Kepler University in Linz, then worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company before moving into startups. In 2015-16, he teamed up with Maruthappu to launch Cera Care, aiming to apply digital technology, data analytics and mobile workflows to deliver home-based nursing and care at scale. At Cera, Sacha played a key role in architecting the digital platform that matches carers, nurses and patients; Maruthappu drove the clinical vision and partnership-building with the NHS and local authorities.

Their model draws on artificial intelligence to anticipate health deterioration, reduce hospitalisation and shift care from institutional settings into people’s homes. Under their leadership, Cera expanded rapidly, securing major funding rounds and delivering tens of thousands of home visits daily across the UK. Together, their combined expertise in medicine, consulting and technology enabled Cera Care to pioneer a new paradigm in home healthcare: digital-first, preventative, and scalable for an ageing population.