Health tech startup Kismet raises $4m in pre-seed funding

Australian health tech startup Kismet has locked in $4 million in a pre-seed round led by Airtree Ventures to reduce the barriers to access disability and healthcare services.

The pre-seed funding has also been backed by Daniel Petre, Black Nova and Flying Fox.

Kismet has developed an end-to-end ecosystem to support plan and fund management, and connect patients with legitimate providers, to address the disability and healthcare sector’s biggest challenges including fraud and non-compliance.

As of 2022, an estimated $6 billion of allocated NDIS funds were lost to criminal activities, with providers charging for false services, overcharging participants, billing additional commissions and more.

While a further $7.5 billion of NDIS funds were left unused by participants due to a lack of visibility into how funds can be allocated.

Kismet aims to address these challenges with an ecosystem of digital tools to make accessing healthcare services simpler, fairer and safer for all. 

The company said it wants to improve the lives of millions of Australians, and their carers who need to access healthcare, by first addressing the immediate challenges faced by participants of the NDIS.

Mark Woodland, co-founder and CEO of Kismet said, “Improving access to healthcare is one of the most important challenges of our generation. Industry and government need to work hand-in-hand to simplify access and stamp out bad actors to ensure everyone has access to one of our most basic needs.

“We saw the same problems of fraud, inefficiencies and friction in childcare a decade ago. Through Xplor, we worked with the government to stamp out $3 billion in fraud, and are now looking to do the same for healthcare.”

Woodland said Kismet sees “huge potential” to address challenges across healthcare.

“While we have our eyes set on the NDIS first, we will be able to scale our tech globally to help millions worldwide access the care they need,” he said.

Elicia McDonald, partner at Airtree Ventures said, “Woodland is a visionary leader who revolutionised the way families, educators and children engage with education when he founded Xplor - by bringing community and brand to an industry in which neither existed before.

“We understand how difficult it is to build something like this and we love seeing repeat founders build on past successes from lessons learned. For Mark, the successes and lessons are plenty and we are excited to go on this journey with him and his team building the future of health.”

Kismet was built by the people behind edutech company Xplor which also suffered from similar problems to the healthcare system, including fraud, inefficiencies and complicated systems.

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