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Why These Brothers Left Their $515 Million Fintech Company To Start A Healthcare Business

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Growing up, Aman and Akash Magoon didn’t spend their summer vacations playing video games or at the beach. Instead, they were busy working, helping their parents run their various real estate, oil and gas and automotive businesses. It made for less interesting show and tells at school, but the two today say that working together throughout their teenage years allowed them to establish a sense of entrepreneurship which has guided them in their adult lives.

In 2019, Akash cofounded and served as CTO of Nayya, a platform that helps employees maximize the value of the benefits options offered by their employers. Aman soon joined as employee number one and eventually VP of product. The company soon found lots of believers willing to invest: it garnered $105.8 million in venture capital and is currently valued at $515 million. Nayya reaches over 300 million employees of its customers, among which are household names like LifeWorks, Guardian and ADP.

That level of success might make their next step something of a surprise: the pair have left Nayya to found a new venture: Adonis. The company is developing a medical billing platform that aims to use AI tools to automate the payment collection process between healthcare providers and insurance companies. On Friday, the New York City-based company announced that it has raised $5.6 million in a seed round led by Bling Capital and backed by other funds like Max Ventures, Homebrew, Soma Capital and Coalition Operators.

Adonis’ origin story begins in an unexpected place: a basketball game. Akash was playing and suffered a gnarly injury that required surgery. The paperwork and red tape involved in getting preapproved for a procedure was, Akash says, surprisingly inefficient. Convinced they could do it better, the brothers took a leap of faith by leaving Nayya to help solve those problems with their new venture.

“It wasn’t until that process [that] Aman and I became intimately familiar with all the challenges that doctors go through when trying to get reimbursed by medical insurance companies,” 30 Under 30 alum Akash, now 26, told Forbes. “Speaking with dozens of practice leaders across the country, we learned that time and time again every single practice was having the same challenge.”

One of those challenges is how long the billing process takes. Around 100 million Americans have medical debt, with one study finding that the number owed is up to $140 billion. That debt piles up in part because people have trouble paying, but also because of a quirk of human nature: according to the duo, patients are less likely to pay their medical bills the longer it takes doctors to receive reimbursement from insurance companies and send a final bill to the patient.

“In our view, the center of the Venn diagram between healthtech and fintech is larger than ever before.”

Aman Magoon

Adonis aims to reduce this gap, making it more likely that patients pay on time, which keeps revenue flows for doctors more consistent and reduces costs by 50%. The company’s software platform, which its customers subscribe to typically on a yearly basis, though some go month-to-month, aims to speed up the process by analyzing revenue trends, validating patient insurance data and automating aspects of the billing process. The company says it’s already working with several healthcare providers, but would not disclose who or how many.

Although this is the Magoon brothers’ first foray into healthcare, they’re confident their experiences give them the right tools to improve the process. Akash brings his experience as a software engineer for companies like Amazon, healthcare financial engagement platform Cedar and financial health company Enigma Technologies. Aman worked for companies like EY and LiveRamp as a consultant and data scientist in its finance, capital markets and insurance division. Their work at Nayya helped give them a handle on the vagaries of the health insurance market.

“In our view, the center of the Venn diagram between healthtech and fintech is larger than ever before,” Aman, 30, said. “I would say we actually spent most of our career on more of the fintech side of healthcare.”

In the future, the duo wants to branch out of the billing side of the industry and build more tools to reduce healthcare costs, such as minimizing admin burden and allowing cost savings to either trickle back down to customers, or assisting providers in facilitating a better patient experience. For now, though, they’re hoping that their company’s ability to reduce healthcare providers’ administrative costs will equal savings for patients.

“Our vision is that we zoom out and think about the cost of healthcare in the United States,” Akash said. “The cost of healthcare has risen much faster than any other country, but we can’t confidently say that the quality of the outcomes have increased at the same rate.”

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