Australian health start-up Kismet has raised $4 million in a pre-seed round to reduce the barriers to access disability and healthcare services and effectively deal with large-scale NDIS fraud that has long thrived in these barriers.
The capital raise was led by AirTree and included experienced techpreneur Daniel Petre AO, venture capital firm Black Nova and early-stage fundraisers Flying Fox.
As of 2022, an estimated $6 billion of allocated NDIS funds were lost to criminal activities, with providers charging for false services, overcharging participants, and billing additional commissions, among others. 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.
To deal with this issue, 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. This ecosystem includes the Kismet Free Online Marketplace, which connects Australians with over 27,000 legitimate healthcare providers; Kismet Wallet, which provides a complete view of a participant’s plan to help securely track funds and improve collaboration with family members, caregivers and patients; and the Kismet Digital Check-In System, which legitimises customer attendance and reduces the risk of fraud.
“Improving access to healthcare is one of the most important challenges of our generation,” Mark Woodland, Co-Founder and CEO of Kismet, said. “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 see huge potential to address challenges across healthcare, and 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,” Woodland added.
Prior to Kismet, Woodland and his team founded Xplor, an edtech company that helped transform the childcare system which has been suffering from similar problems to the healthcare system, including fraud, inefficiencies and complicated systems. Xplor has become the leading provider of childcare software and helped save the government from $3.1 billion worth of fraud in 2020 through the use of their software combined with government investigations.
“Mark 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,” Elicia McDonald, Partner at Airtree Ventures, said. “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.”
And co-investor Daniel Petre welcomed Mark and his founding team returning to the theme of connecting communities of people by reducing administrative burdens allowing them to focus on their families’ health.
“As we face an increasingly ageing population, this change is well overdue,” Petre averred.
