Changemakers: Oriol Fuertes Cabassa

Oriol Fuertes Cabassa MBA2015 could see that the way we look after the long-term ill and elderly had gone wrong. So he founded a company – taking a massive pay cut – to do something about it.

If you want to understand his high-performance mindset, consider how he conducted the interview for this article. He scheduled it to coincide with his journey to his next meeting, discussing his life, his work and vision via Skype while en route through busy Barcelona to meet a potential investor.

That shouldn’t be surprising for a man who measures his life in terms of direct social impact per hour worked – something he says stems from inheriting his mother’s boundless desire to help others. After giving up his job at global consultancy McKinsey to start homecare provider QIDA in March 2018, his approach has been a success, and much of it he credits to his MBA at LBS.

Now approaching its fourth year in business, QIDA (pronounced ‘cuida’, which translates to “care” in Spanish) cares for 3,500 new elderly patients every year, providing 8,000 hours of care a day, which equates to more than 240,000 hours of care a month! Carers, too, are taken care of with the business paying its carers 20% more than the market rate as part of its mission to raise the social status of the profession.

The business broke their initial €5 million euro target, raising more than €8 million (£6.7 million) with help from the leading social impact funds of Spain (such as Creas, Ship2B and FBS), as well as through investment from Spain’s fourth-largest private banking group, Sabadell. Plus, there has been great support of the Ministry of Social care through SEPIDES. And despite it being tougher than Fuertes Cabassa thought it would be and having made a lot of mistakes along the way, the business is growing. He says: “I am living a dream and would make the same decisions to start QIDA.”