Why these brothers left their $515 million Fintech company to start a healthcare company

Grow up, Aman and Akash Magoon didn’t spend their summer vacation 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 became less interesting show and tell at school, but the two today say that working together through their teenage years allowed them to establish a sense of entrepreneurship that has guided them in their adult lives.

In 2019, Akash co-founded 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 many believers willing to invest: it raised $105.8 million in venture capital and is currently valued at $515 million. Nayya reaches over 300 million employees of its clients, among them are well-known names such as LifeWorks, Guardian and ADP.

That level of success may 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 such as Max Ventures, Homebrew, Soma Capital and Coalition Operators.

Adonis’ origin story begins in an unexpected place: a basketball game. Akash was playing and got a nasty injury that required surgery. The paperwork and bureaucracy involved in getting pre-approved for a procedure was, says Akash, surprisingly inefficient. Convinced they could do better, the brothers took a leap of faith by leaving Nayya to help solve these problems with their new venture.

“It wasn’t until that process [that] Aman and I got to know first-hand all the challenges doctors go through trying to get reimbursed from medical insurance companies,” 30 Under 30 alum Akash, now 26, told Forbes. “Talking to dozens of practice managers across the country, we learned that time and time again every practice had the same challenge.”

One of these challenges is how long the invoicing process takes. About 100 million Americans have medical debt, with one study finding the number owed is up to $140 billion. That debt piles up partly because people have trouble paying, but also because of a quirk of human nature: according to the duo, patients are less likely to pay 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 health tech and fintech is bigger than ever before.”

Adonis aims to close this gap, making it more likely that patients will pay on time, keeping the revenue stream for doctors more consistent and reducing costs by 50%. The company’s software platform, which customers subscribe to typically on an annual 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 is already working with several healthcare professionals, but will not reveal who or how many.

Although this is the Magoon brothers’ first foray into healthcare, they are confident that their experience gives them the right tools to improve the process. Akash brings his experience as a software engineer for companies such as Amazon, the healthcare financial engagement platform Cedar and the company Enigma Technologies. Aman worked for companies such as EY and LiveRamp as a consultant and data scientist in the finance, capital markets and insurance divisions. 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 health tech and fintech is bigger than ever before,” said Aman, 30. “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 from the billing side of the industry and build more tools to reduce healthcare costs, such as minimizing the administrative burden and allowing cost savings to either flow back to customers, or help providers facilitate a better patient experience. For now, however, they hope that the company’s ability to reduce healthcare providers’ administrative costs will equate to savings for patients.

“Our vision is that we zoom out and think about the cost of health care in the United States,” Akash said. “Health care costs have increased much faster than any other country, but we cannot confidently say that the quality of outcomes has increased at the same rate.”