800,000 Lives, 210 Engineers, One Bet: Inside Collective Health's AI Push

Speaker A: What if the company that's supposed to pay for your healthcare is using AI to deny it? Unitedhealthcare says AI is saving them a billion dollars. Blue Cross says AI is costing their members 2 billion in claims. Same tool, completely different outcomes. The only difference is who the AI is actually working for. Most founders don't think about healthcare until it's too late. You're scaling, you're hiring, and suddenly responsible for 20 people's medical lives. Nobody teaches you that part. But what if AI could do your entire benefits design before you hire your next person? Clinical teams analyzing your workforce demographics. 150 vetted health partners stitched into a single plan. AI routing your employees to the right care in real time. An 18 month M product roadmap shipped in 6. It's already happening. And we can all take a little bit from healthcare. When we think about the AI in our products, is it working for the customer, or is it working for your margin? Because that one decision will define everything that follows. Welcome to AI For Founders. I'm Ryan Estes. Today I sat down with Gaurav, uh, head of core engineering at Collective health, a, uh, $1.5 billion company serving 800,000 members. This one is for founders scaling past 10 employees who need to stop treating benefits like a box. To check, head to AI for Founders Co and subscribe to the newsletter. The frameworks we talk about every week live there. It's free, it's sharp, and it'll make you a better builder. Your future self will. Thank you for showing up. And if this podcast episode gave you one thing worth running with, please leave a review. It's the highest leverage two minutes of your week, and I'd really appreciate it. This episode is brought to you by Inbox Alchemy, the number one distribution motion for founders. Every follower you have on social is rented. One algorithm change and they're gone. An email list is yours forever. Inbox Alchemy delivers 20,000 targeted subscribers in your first six months. Uh, people that actually match your ICP, weekly founder newsletters, brand partnerships, and a personal brand that compounds while you sleep. If you don't own your audience, you don't own your business. Go to InboxAlchemy Co and start building something no algorithm can take from you. All right, Gaurav, uh, thank you so much for joining me. Welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you, Ryan. Great to be here. Great to be part of the conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah. And we're going to dive right into it. So the a continuing theme is healthcare on this podcast and kind of to use Your words as we're getting warmed up, the healthcare system in America is broken and every single person I talk to, at the very minimum, is frustrated. So I'm really excited to hear about your work with Collective Health. Now I wanted to maybe just start with a broad conversation about AI in healthcare. I am absolutely bullish. I see there's so many opportunities, uh, with AI to, to give us the healthc care that we need, you know, and I, I speak to founders that are working on this fervently and, and there's always this kind of like pressure and tension against it. And some of that I think, uh, with regulations is justified and some of it I think is really irritating. But I want to talk about kind of like a current event to kind of dive into things. So UnitedHealth recently said AI was going to save them a billion dollars next year. Seems like a plus. And then Blue Cross said that AI coding is adding 2 billion in claims spending. So basically the same technology, different outcomes. Um, one side is saying like, hey, we can make things better with AI, the other saying like, oh, this is actually costing our stakeholders, uh, a large amount of money. What is your kind of approach and your take as far as like AI enhancing or degradating kind of our healthcare system?

Speaker B: Yeah, so great question, Ryan. And again, it's the challenge and the um, conversation of the day. Let me step back a little bit and start from why Collective Health and the mission of Collective Health. Uh, our founder Ali started it in 2013 primarily because he believed, and he went through some of the challenges with transparency in terms of cost, um, and what was accessible from healthcare perspective. And we firmly believe and clearly see that technology is what is needed to disrupt. Now with any technology and especially with AI, you're going to hear multiple sides of the conversation. And we are hearing that every day. Um, it also depends on how we use the technology to make sure we use it for the right, um, right use cases, right solutions. Uh, for example, when United Healthcare thinks about how it's going to save the cost at Collective Health, when I look at a technology like AI, saving cost is not the first thing we start with. I don't think any company should start looking at what's in it for me. We serve our customers. That's why we are there. The members and the lives we touch. Um, our all conversation should be starting from how do I use technologies like AI or any other technology to better life of our customers. So when I think of AI at Collective Health, we start from how do we make sure that the Customer gets the benefit from it. Right. So the customer should be able to at their convenience, anytime come and get a clear answer to any of the question they are looking for. How do we make sure there is transparency in the information they are looking for? There are a lot of complexities within healthcare. For example, you must have heard about uh, prior auth, which is a bad word which slows down the whole healthcare process. And what we are focusing on is using AI to ensure that we are able to do it faster. Now in the process of doing it faster, if it makes it cheaper for us to run that business, that's icing on the cake. But that should not be the reason why we do it. So that's at least a ah, collective health view is making sure that we are helping our members, helping our customers, helping our clients save cost, making sure it's transparent and if along the way we get the benefit, that's great.

Speaker A: I love that. It's beautiful. And that's, I think that runs uh, across the whole medical industry aside from the insurance companies. Like how, and this is probably an unanswerable question but like how do we get the insurance companies to share these kind of values that like that collective health has, that the doctors have, that everybody inside that the building has. Like why is there such a disconnect that like uh, uh, you know, United and Blue Cross is just looking at their bottom line, you know, like oh, it's good if it saves us money or it's bad if it, if it costs us money. Like how do we get away from that?

Speaker B: No, that's a great question. Now I won't be able to comment and it's not going to be fair for me to comment on, you know, um, whether it's United or you know, Blue Cross, Blue Shield or any other company in terms of how they consider what the way I look at it is, we set the right example in the industry. We make sure we amplify it, we show the path, lead the way and others will follow. That's the approach at least we are taking because I think, you know one of the things, um, a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi, uh, and one of the quote which um, has always stood by me is be the change you would like to see in the world. And that's how I think of it, you know, when it comes to our business as well, that what we want to see in the world, we need to start ourselves first and make sure we show the path.

Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, it's a, it's a um, it's a very powerful quote largely because it gives you agency right, uh, out of the gate. You know, I think a lot of people get frustrated and I'm very delicate talking about health care because everybody has stories, you know, and we'll, we'll learn a little bit about your story and the frustration is palpable and it makes you just want to like, throw your arms up and be like forget it and just give up, you know, but like be the change. It's like, no, the impetus really is on you. You know, it kind of, it reminds me of my parenting philosophy. It's like, man, I can't really change much in the world, but if I raise my kids in a loving way, then like over time, you know, the way I was taught, the seventh generation will, will basically reap the rewards of that. So I think that's very proactive and very optimistic and I maybe like you, I optimism that it's like it right now, it's broken, you know, but we can fix it. And I know that because I speak to like passionate people all the time that are committed to it.

Speaker B: Um, absolutely, absolutely. We got to do it one passionate

Speaker A: person at a time, 100%. So let's, let's talk a little bit then about collective health. Give us kind of a breakdown of what collective health does and who they do it for.

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So collective health, as I mentioned, started um, Almost uh, now 13 years back. Right. 2013 is when it started. Our founder, Ali Diab, right, He, he ran into an unfortunate medical condition. He had the premium of the premium health insurance plan. And um, he found himself into a situation where he needed to be rushed to an emergency room after multiple surgeries. When he got home, he got mountain of healthcare bills with no clear explanation of why these things are coming to him. He had to spend hundreds of hours and that's when he realized and saw that hey, this needs to change. And I'm glad he did that. And he started Collective Health started to pull together folks who had the same kind of passion for let's make a change and let's impact um, the industry and the world in a better way. What gets me excited about Collective Health is there are so many people in the company who share a similar passion and they all have their own stories in terms of the hardships or the challenges they have seen and they want to make it a better place. Collective health primarily is what's called a third party administrator. So we sit in the middle of, we work closely with self funded plans. So employers who are looking for health insurance for their employees who care for the kind of health care their employees get. So we, we work with them, help define the right insurance plan, the benefit structure, we administer the plan, we work directly with the members to answer and support them in their, in their healthcare journey. Um, so that's the critical role we play. The mission we have is how do we ensure transparency, cost transparency, and better service for the customers? Uh, we provide my collective, um, as the primary interface for all the members so that they can see the cost and the cost structure and benefit. We have a service called Care Navigation which supports the members through the care journey they are going through. We have another service called Collective Compass. So we are working with the clients so that they have an easy way to understand where the costs are being spent. And then partner collective, because we have a number of partners which come into the ecosystem to make sure there is transparency for the partners as well.

Speaker A: Amazing. So the logos you mentioned are some of the most sexiest companies on planet earth. Do you, do you work with, uh, startups too?

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. So we have clients, um, with 10 to 15 employees, all the way up to 70, 80,000 employees as well.

Speaker A: Amazing. And I mean, that is also a major problem, I would say, with the American health care system is that it's tied to your job. For better or for worse. That's the way it is. And for a lot of, uh, founders listening to this show, this is something that sneaks up on you real quick. You know, you, you, you're launching a product, you find traction, you're starting to scale, you're like, oh my gosh, we need to hire 10 more people. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Now you're responsible for all the healthcare of your entire staff. And you know, especially for startup founders, uh, they're not ready for that. I wasn't ready for that. Nobody's ready for that. Really. You need a partner because it's like, hey, we're trying to like, enact a vision here and work in cell. Honestly, it's like, well, now I got to be. I have to have all these disclosures about, around, like medical conditions and things like that. And it begins. It's too much. It's just almost overwhelming. So, you know, to have a vendor that you trust is, is absolutely critical. It will, it will save you so much time, so much headache, so much hassle. Um, so what you guys are really doing here, are you helping the organization actually purchase a plan based on the variables of the staff and kind of what their needs are in three years AI fluency will be a baseline expectation for every college grad, not a differentiator. It'll be a requirement. The students getting ahead are the ones building that skill right now in high school and college before it becomes table stakes. Ainativestudent.com is the program doing that weekly one on one coaching, live cohort sessions, on demand courses, and the fastest growing AI chat for students, all tailored to your student's specific career path. Pre med, they learn how AI is transforming diagnostics. Pre law, they learn legal AI tools, business, they learn to think like an AI power operator. One flat membership less than a private tutor. Cancel any time. And if you're a founder listening to the show, you already know the cost of falling behind. Don't let your kid pay that price. Go to ainativestudent.com apply in a couple minutes and get your student into the cohort that changes their trajectory. Ainativestudent.com and send them to the chat. It's totally free. I want to tell you about someone I think you should hire. Her name is Casey Taylor and Casey is an AI partnership agent. And Casey's entire job is securing brand sponsorships for your podcast, not handing you a spreadsheet, actually reaching out, making the pitch and closing the deal for your show on your behalf. Chasing sponsorships for podcasters is a headache. They'd rather be recording episodes. Casey manages that completely. You brief Casey on your show, Casey goes to work, and you get back to doing the thing you're actually good at. Whether you've got 5,000 listeners or 50,000. She knows how to find the right brands for your audience and get them on board. You need Casey. Every podcaster does. Go to gethowdy.com that's G-E-T-H-O-W-I.com and meet Casey Taylor. Your new partnership agent is ready when you are.

Speaker B: I'm glad you asked that question because that's where you know, the collective health difference starts. So we have a clinical team, we have our, uh, clinical experts who would look at and work closely with the employers. Not specifically going into each employee's condition or data, just in general in terms of the demographic, the age brackets and the area they're in. Based on the data we have, we have been able to suggest the right plan and the benefit structure which should be established so that the employees are taken care of. There are even discussions in terms of, you know, be after a surgery or, um, let's say someone has a knee replacement, how many chiropractic you know Sessions one should be including, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we would go to that level of details in terms of figuring out the right benefit structure. And our experience with over 800,000 members or lives on our platform allows us enough data and coverage to uncover these best practices which we are able to bring into every conversation.

Speaker A: Beautiful. You know, and it's a part of this too is the kind of healthcare that's appropriate for particular companies or lifestyles or things like that. And I'll just kind of use mine for example because it's also kind of a sore spot. You know I generally, you know, the folks I'm hiring are young, you know, so the healthcare they need is minimus. But it also means that like things like pregnancy, you know, that's what I'm looking out for. Like okay, what's, what's covered with if there's like a new little AI for founders baby which is like the best thing ever, you know, how does that look? Largely because I got caught in a trap like that. You didn't check a box and now you owe $10,000 with my, when my son was born. So you know, so there's that there's like young people, uh, they don't have a lot of like health needs. That's not always the case. But generally speaking, but also people like me, like I'm a little bit witchy, you know what I mean? Like healthcare system's kind of scary with going to the doctor is intimidating. I want to go to the acupuncturist, I want to go to the chiropractor like you said. I want massage. I'm a tech bro. So I want you know, saunas and cold plunge. I want nutritionists. You know, I'm very interested in peptides and hormone replacement therapy and performance optimization type stuff. A lot of the kind of fringy stuff within medicine that's not necessary pathology but have like a strong interest in like optimizing health. So you know, what can you say like uh, are benefits and plans maybe that stick out for collective health that might cater to somebody like me.

Speaker B: So great question and I think as you mentioned preventive health care or preventive care is actually the best kind of care. You don't want to wait till finding out you really need something but if you can be supported throughout the journey. So one of the things we focused on is the partner ecosystem. We have over 150 partners. If someone's looking for weight loss and weight management, we have no or uh, you know, for mental health benefit. There is uh, there is Loom. And there is a variety of partners who we bring into the ecosystem. And as you are defining the structure of the plan and the benefit which your employers or employees will have, you can stitch those programs together and make sure they are available. And our care navigation service on top of it can help and suggest, uh, to ensure that the members are taking advantage of what's available to them. And that's one of the differentiator. I feel it takes time and effort to make sure we bring the right partners to the ecosystem. But we believe it's critical, um, for our members because it create, it becomes a differentiator.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's cool, you know, and this is another place I'm very optimistic because, you know, medicine is really kind of like adapting very quickly right now. You know, the stuff that's happening with GLP1s and the stuff that's happening with peptides and the stuff that's happening with psychedelics in the White House, like these kind of therapies are moving very quickly and largely because there's a lot of scientific rigor that's gone into it. But what's interesting is it is kind of cyclical because, uh, a lot of this kind of like, let's just call it like prevention type medicine is prevalent in ayurvedic medicine. You know, so it's like almost now the west is trying to catch up to what India has known for a thousand years.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker A: I love it now. It's really.

Speaker B: Oh, go ahead.

Speaker A: Sorry.

Speaker B: It is. No, um, see, the medicine and what's available to us is evolving. I believe that AI is going to make that evolution faster. And that's not an area where, you know, AI medicine research is not something collective health is into. But I'm excited about what kind of therapies become available so that they could be part of the plan and offering for our customers.

Speaker A: 100 and it's a slow boat, but I mean, it's, it's really pushing, you know. So for somebody like me, old hippie like me, I love to see it. You know, I'm just, I'm just waiting for like the, the, uh. Well, actually, I'll put it this way. I mean, I saw my daughter had protein Pop Tarts. I was like, oh, my gosh. She's like, dad, it's health food. I'm like, do not say that Pop Tarts are health food, sweetheart. But I'm like, dang. It does have 30 grams of protein though.

Speaker B: So, like, there you go, there you go.

Speaker A: The culture is shifting into it, which Is, which is really cool. Um, cool. I would love to hear, kind of like your role because you have a senior engineering role at Collective Health and maybe talk a little bit about, you know, what you brought to the table and kind of what you're working on now.

Speaker B: Absolutely. So I, I am a, um, I'm a nerd and a techie at heart. I started as an engineer. Um, I have been fortunate enough to be part of multiple iterations of technology driven revolution in the industry. The big one for me was when I was at Apple, iPhone was launched. Wow. Um, we were in the atrium when Steve was announcing it and our jaws just dropped as to what the hell. And that's the kind of moment it was. And then 10 years after that, every year, we would see the complexity, the innovation, and how fast the whole world started to adopt it. And our lives are different because we all are carrying a computer in our pocket these days after that.

Speaker A: Let me jump in real quick. Did you find out, uh, about the launch of the iPhone at the same time that we did?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Wow. It was that protected of a secret.

Speaker B: That protected of a secret. So there was obviously a core team, you know, working on that. Um, but most of the company found out. But that was the culture. Um, even on big product announcements, we would find out at the time of the announcement and we all were like, let's see what he's going to say. I remember iPhone4 launch. Steve was like, everyone go and download it now. And we were like, oh my God, he said it. And the whole world started to download. I won't take name of the big, you know, telco service provider in the country. Their whole infrastructure came down crushed at that moment. Crushed because no one anticipated and expected the excitement which is going to be there in the whole world when Steve says something. Uh, but that was incredible. And that product in itself has taken now so many iterations. And, um, Apple's still an icon and what it produced. So I feel fortunate that I got to be part of that. Um, after Apple, I got an opportunity to be part of a company called Reliance Geo. Mr. Ambani Mukesh Ambani was the richest guy in Asia. He took on a mission for digitizing India. And his view was, I want to make sure every nook and corner of the country is connected to high speed Internet. 18,000 villages connected. India before Reliance Geo service was launched was 150th in the world in terms of broadband penetration. Three months after Jio launched, India was almost number one in terms of. And it's number one in broadband penetration at the moment. It's night and day, what it was able to do. So these two experiences got me to think, where do I want to go next? I had, um, healthcare, you know, challenge within my family, an experience which got me to a point where. Okay, this needs to be tackled.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Excuse me. And hold on.

Speaker A: Are you comfortable talking about that a little bit?

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It just, you know, when. When I start to think about that, um, so maybe I'll. I grew up in India, and after my dad passed away, I. My mom moved with us in the United States. As you know, she was getting older. One of the belief I. And the confidence I had was, we are in us. We have the best healthcare system. It failed us thoroughly, and I just couldn't believe it. It got to a point where we're not getting the right surveys, we are not getting the right diagnosis. I got so frustrated, I had to move her and to bring her to India to get to the doctors and the care she needs. She's not with us anymore. M. But at that point, as I was looking at which industry do I go in? The opportunity to work with Collective health came up, and I jumped on that because it's the right mission. So my role is I head what's called core engineering. So that means the whole technology stack, um, within Collective health is primarily my team. My big focus is making sure we modernize the technology stack with AI. I'm so sorry.

Speaker A: No problem.

Speaker B: And so I'm focused on making sure we modernize the technology stack with AI. And what I mean by that is when I look at our, uh, roadmap, the things we need, we thought we're going to take 18 to 24 months to deliver with AI. I believe we can. And my teams are showing it that we can deliver that roadmap within six months.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: What that means is the features and capability which our customers had to wait. They don't have to. And that's the opportunity with AI and that's the primary focus we have.

Speaker A: Incredible. I love that, you know, like the vibe coding aspect and just the, uh, AI augmented engineering is just putting everything in hyperdrive, which is honestly so fun to speak of that. It's almost as fun as that iPhone reveal. You know, that's a part what gets me, uh, ramped up because I'm a techie and I'm a nerd too. And I remember that iPhone launch. It was like, oh, my God. I mean, people just can't imagine, like, my kids can't imagine, like, there's lines around the block waiting to pick up an iPhone all the way to iPhone3. You know, iPhone3 was still an event where you had a, uh, you waited outside of Verizon or whatever. When Verizon got the iPhone, it was a big deal. You know, I kind of press a piss of that now like there's a reinvigoration of like tech and what's possible because nobody really knows exactly what we can do now. What we have learned over the last 12 months is the AI augmented software engineering tools. Like it just puts us, it gives us like superpower. Um, but I'm also interested in like how the capabilities of AI are kind of like where you're implementing them into kind of like customer experiences and then where you're not. Because you know, AI is obviously famously non deterministic. So there's certain things within healthcare that you want to keep it way away from and then other places that it can create like really kind of cool, um, features. So I'd love to hear how kind of like customer facing kind of tools, AI is kind of playing a role in the company now.

Speaker B: You are absolutely right that it's that iPhone kind of a moment. It's a technology which is not an incremental change. It's a shift. It's a huge shift in terms of what it brings. The other difference or the thing. What I've observed and seen, um, is that the pace at which it's improving is just not seen or heard of at all. What was possible six months back versus what you can do with it now in terms of whether it's white coding, whether it's AI agents, Um, I have a couple of AI agents running right now in terms of the research and things I needed to do. They are working on it. When we are done, I'm going to get the answer and I don't have to do that research. Right. So that wasn't available few months back. So what it can do on a daily basis, it's just, it's impressive. I'm glad. The hyperscalers are competing with each other and every other week they're trying to figure out how they are going to try to get ahead of the other one. When it comes to AI for healthcare, one of our fundamental philosophy is that we gotta make sure that it is safe, it's secure. First and foremost we make sure that we create a harness which clearly protects our customer data. Customer data is near and dear to us. We make that commitment to our customers that we're going to use technology where it brings the benefit but we are not going to take lightly on the responsibility have in terms of securing our customers data. The areas where we have started to use AI first we started with internal use cases because we wanted to make sure we feel comfortable with and we are seeing the benefits. So when you are doing our uh, developers are building and developing applications, we are using AI across the board. Now we are not just sitting back and letting AI write code and no one has to do anything right with any technology. It's supporting the individuals make things go faster in making our uh, engineers more effective, reducing the time to get to our roadmap, not necessarily replacing your question on how we are helping our customers and customer facing um, solutions. So if a customer calls what we are making sure is we have an AI whether it's a chatbot or a voice bot with whom they can have an open conversation as if they are talking to a live person instead of an IVR which says press one and press two and they go into a loop which everyone hates. That's not the kind of experience we are creating. We are making sure that service is available to our customers whenever they need. The other aspect which our customer is not going to see in terms of how the technology is working they're going to see the benefit that we have an AI agent participating as a co pilot for all our customer service agents. So that AI agent is listening to the conversation in real time, nudging to the contact center agent that hey, this is what the customer is asking for and this might be the possible answer or area. A typical call center agent has 15 to 16 applications. They have to navigate and uh, they go through the complexity of technology instead of focusing on the customer and taking care of the customer. That's a typical contact center agent. AI allows us to fundamentally shift that and make it easier so that they don't have to spend time clicking through five different applications to find the information, information is brought to them and ah, they could have the right conversation with the right level of empathy needed to support our members and where they are in their healthcare journey or need. So that's an area where we believe uh and we are already seeing the difference how it helps our customers. There are a number of other areas in terms of looking at each of the customer interaction, figuring out what are the trending and new issues where AI is able to identify those so that we can address them faster. So these are some of the customer facing areas where we are making sure we are actively using AI. Now you asked an uh, interesting and Important question on where are we making sure that we are not just letting AI go loose? Right. Um, so I'll give you an example of when it comes to claims adjudication. While AI can do the pre work of let's assimilate and collect the information, but we want to make sure every claim has gone through someone's eyes and reviews. And especially if you're going to reject the claim, we want to make sure that a person, our claims expert, has looked at it and ensured it's being done right. So when we look at all the use cases, we are very careful in making sure as to where do we take advantage of AI in what fashion and making sure. Is it helping the customer? That's number one and along the way it helps the organization. That's icing on the cake.

Speaker A: I love that. Yeah, and you got to be really careful there because that is where people get absolutely livid is like if, if they feel like they're being filtered out by AI in some way, it's like, obviously that's not a great application. But you know, as far as like chat support, this is where I'm becoming like, uh, overly reliant on people that are implementing these processes because ultimately, like, if I have to call and talk to a person about like questions that I don't know what I don't know, and it's in medical or legal or taxes, I want to speak to AI because I can just have that conversation going over here all day long. You know what I mean? Because it's like I'm jumping to podcast, to phone call, to meeting, to. I'm in and out of my attention. I never have like 35 minutes where I can just like focus my attention with one person. Plus, a person might get a little bit like snippy or irritated with me, but like when you have that kind of like chat support from an AI bot, it's like you can just, you can get all the questions out, you can ask them, what do I need to know that I don't know? You can find your blind spots and go deeper into it. I mean that I'm like kind of becoming addicted to it across the, across the board. That when I actually have to talk to like a person in some kind of support situation, I'm a little irritated. I'm not going to lie.

Speaker B: I'm glad to hear, because I feel the same. I, uh, and I see a lot of our customers do that too. And you know, you want to meet the customer where they are rather than forcing the customers. We all have busy lives. And while you are, you know, in a conversation working on something, as you mentioned, you can have a chatbot or, you know, that kind of an AI thread going in parallel, and you don't have to worry about sitting and having a conversation with someone. And especially some of these conversations could be challenging and tough conversations. And AI and technology is a great use in making sure we are meeting the customers where they are.

Speaker A: I love it. I'd love to have a little conversation too, about alignment, because, you know, the, the scale at which you're working. I mean, Collective health is a $1.5 billion company with about 250,000 members. And like you said, you've got agents spun up. I'm sure your whole team, they might have four or five agents spun up. How do you kind of make sure, like, everyone's going in the right direction and their agent support is all kind of going in the right direction and kind of like, how do you steer the ship? And maybe some question, like, how big is the engineering team at Collective Health?

Speaker B: Great questions, but one point I want to make. We are close, ah, to 800,000 members and lives. We are so on our platform.

Speaker A: My numbers are way off.

Speaker B: That's okay. That's okay. We have fortunately seen, uh, the right response in the market. Customers are seeing the benefit and we are seeing that interest, uh, of customers coming in, and we are seeing the growth as well. So we are fortunate and happy about that. Sorry. We are a startup.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: We are a lean organization. And, um, when I look at engineering is close to around 210 to 215 engineers overall in the organization. As we continue to grow, our aspiration is that with AI, we'll be able to, with, I call this a lean team, uh, be able to do a lot more and continue to build our roadmap and, you know, deliver what needs to be delivered and.

Speaker A: Yeah, sorry, 200 is a lean team. I love it.

Speaker B: That's.

Speaker A: Somebody's coming from Apple. Incredible. Cool. Um, we're at the time of the podcast where we're going to enter the quantum round. Are you ready for the quantum round?

Speaker B: Okay, cool. What does quantum round mean? You have to explain to me.

Speaker A: Well, I'm just trying to, like, escalate the lightning round. You know, you had the lightning round, but it's 2026. We're going Quantum round.

Speaker B: Love it, love it. Uh, cool.

Speaker A: I'm really interested in kind of your take broadly in the kind of democratization, uh, of this technology. Um, largely because I'm looking at India you know, India has more honor students than America has students. You know, and to your point, like, broadband has massive penetration. Everyone has a phone. And of course now with Claude code, you can just like dictate to your phone and be programming all the time. Like, what do you see, like five, ten years down the line that like, this technology is going to bring to a place, let's say, like India.

Speaker B: I love the question. And um, you know, a technology like, uh, AI and I, um, firsthand saw this with smartphones, broadband when we launched JIO in India, certainly. So we got to a point where even first few weeks of the launch, we were getting almost a million customers a day. Within the first, uh, Geo first hundred days, we got 200 million customers because the demand was there and we saw, um, incredible applications and use cases. The digital economy just, you know, blossomed and bloomed in India. AI can have a profound impact. When I look at India, it's like, you know, tale of two cities. There is a portion of the country which you see skyscrapers, you see people with, you know, expensive cars, but there are portions of the country where they are even below the minimum wage.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that's where AI can have a huge impact. What I would love to see, and there is no reason why it will not happen that access to. When it comes to health care or, uh, education or, uh, knowledge on what should I be doing if I'm a farmer and I want to get advice on what should I be, you know, planting or, you know, one of the things is broken and the shop which fixes it is three villages down. Can I do something myself? I need medical attention, but my, you know, village doesn't have a doctor and can I get the immediate attention and help or, uh, regardless of where, where I am in the country or what language I speak, can I get access to math and world knowledge so that the overall community goes, the level goes up and get uplifted. That's an opportunity which gets me excited about AI, um, number of applications across the board. But I think that's what's going to make the difference, especially for a country like India.

Speaker A: Totally agree. I mean, it's fascinating because it's like opportunity is one thing, but like the opportunity there is now, like they, they can build right now. And there's all these like, amazing studies where they show, you know, geographic regions where you're talking about, um, uh, Indian citizens in the country or poverty, but like the, their test scores are still through the roof, like the intellect and the, the capacity is there. And now they have the opportunity that's like you guys can just jump straight to building, you know. And so, you know, I'm looking at my kids, you know, my kids, 17, 18, I'm like, don't look around. This isn't your competition around here. You, there's a billion kids in India right now that are coming for you, you know. So it's going to create this really cool environment where um, we're going to have novel solutions coming from all over the place and where I'm really excited about it kind of ties back into iPhone too is they say like the media is the, the message. So it's like the apps and everything that was the phone is kind of like secondary to actually the phone itself. Like this is the thing, you know what I mean? And we're waiting in AI I think to have that hardware moment of like what is that hardware moment going to be for this technology that will come to define it, you know. And ultimately it might be a glasses, it might be like a pendant, it might be something like that. But it hasn't been written yet. And we're at a, in a position now where we have, you know, we've opened up to 7,8 billion people that it's like hey, hey, hey, you can build it right now. Like let's, if you have the idea, launch it, you know, you can get to it. So it's really exciting time. Um, okay, speaking of that speaking exciting times, um, aside from what you're doing with Kollective, um, uh, what are you playing with and what kind of toys are you building with AI right now?

Speaker B: Oh so I get so excited about it that um, you know every day I'm looking at. So I have a couple of open cloud instances and AI agents running and doing things for me. So few of my side interests, uh, are. I dabble into options trading a little bit. So I have few AI agents doing research for me. Every day as the market opens I get few reports. One at 6:45 and the other one at 7:15am in the morning. Some suggestions so that I look at it and decide what I want to do. I love music, uh, Bollywood music and you know I am and I want, I would love to be um, a dj. So I'm a part time DJ for home parties and stuff but AI helps me make some of the music as well and you know, make it exciting and fun. A uh, number of use cases I'm playing with, I'm playing with some hardware devices as well but those are some of the experiments I'm running at the moment.

Speaker A: Amazing. Yeah, the, the AI music is so fun, you know, And I was hesitant for a while because I'm a musician and I was like, man, I don't want the robots taken over. That'll never replace what I can do with a guitar. I'm like, oh, yes, they can. And it's a different thing, but like, it's so fun. What kind of music you making?

Speaker B: So, um, there is a lot of. There is an interesting theme going on with Bollywood music. Take, um, old popular songs, kind of mix them with new age techno music. Few movies recently came out which kind of made that popular. You can add some. Mix some rap into it, English into Hindi, and makes it an interesting dance move on. Uh, and old Bollywood music, it's magical. And sky's the limit when you do that. So I love playing with it. And at least from my perspective, that's my, for lack of better words, kind of the safe zone. Or when I get tired. That's how I decompress, by listening to music and kind of getting into my zone. And at times I'll go running. And I have seen that the pace at which I run completely depends on the kind of music I'm listening to. I don't know if that happens with you.

Speaker A: Oh, 100. I need your mixtape because my pace is very slow. So I need Guarov's mixtape so I can kick. And hey, shout out to what's his name, uh, Diljit. He just sold out, uh, Madison Square Gardens.

Speaker B: He is amazing.

Speaker A: He's killing it.

Speaker B: He is, he is killing it. And such a down to earth simple person. You hear him talk and he is one of those genuine person at heart who always wants to do the right thing, but he's creating amazing music and touching so many lives.

Speaker A: Oh, it's amazing.

Speaker B: Cool.

Speaker A: Um, I know Toys for Tots, uh, is a charity that you support. I'm curious, ah, to why you'd like to support Toys for Tots.

Speaker B: So m. December is, uh, uh, my birthday is in December. Uh, you know, I love the holidays, you know, Christmas especially. And um, it's uh, time of festivities in our family. Uh, I love the charity, um, because it's spreading joy of holiday, joy of giving. Um, and you know, I love that feeling. I used to enjoy getting, um, you know, gifts more than getting gifts, kind of giving and sharing love, uh, as I was growing up. And I see this charity do that on, um, you know, a daily basis, you know, around that, that time of the year when there are so many families who are not fortunate to be celebrating and getting the right kind of excitement and cheer within, you know, their household. And I think this charity is having that impact at that level. So that's why I've always kind of felt attracted to, uh, and excited about the charity. Um, you know, Toys for Tots.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's beautiful. I agree. I'm pretty sentimental when it comes to, like, Christmas time. And that came later because I worked in retail before my kids were born, so I hated Christmas for, like, 10 years. I was like, no, Christmas season's almost here. But once you got kids, you know, Toys for Tots, it's, like, given, um, presents on Christmas morning or whatever. It's just an absolutely magical time. What's the day you're born in December? What's the day?

Speaker B: Oh, 15th. So kind of middle of the middle of the month. Uh, but the whole month is month of festivities for me on Christmas. We have a tradition in our household that I dress up like Santa. My younger one, for the longest time thought I'm Santa comes in and does it. But pretty much within few years, she knew what's going on. But I still dress up. I have special Santa's shoes as well, and go through the whole thing. And we have a blast when we do it.

Speaker A: I love it. I love it. Yeah.

Speaker B: My.

Speaker A: My birthday is November, uh, 28th, so I always get tied into Thanksgiving, uh, and my son is the. The 23rd, so we're like, kind of Thanksgiving, and my dad's the 22nd, so there you go. Same kind of thing if you can, like, kind of piggyback on a holiday. And I feel like December 15th is far enough that you're not competing with Jesus's birthday, which that seems like it'd be a big pressure. You know what I mean?

Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. You got to celebrate more, right? That you do it middle of the month, and then, you know, after that, the holiday season starts.

Speaker A: It's amazing. Uh, Gaurav, this has been absolutely amazing. I really appreciate the conversation. Everybody, check out collectivehealth.com. of course. I will put a link in the show notes. Um, Gaurav, what's the best place for people to connect with you personally online?

Speaker B: Um, I would say the best place to connect is through LinkedIn. Um, so you can find me Gaurav Agarwal on LinkedIn. Uh, but, Ryan, thank you for taking the time and walking and having this conversation. As I was mentioning to you, uh, this is the first time I'm doing this, but, um, you made it fun as a conversation, made it easy to

Speaker A: go through tremendous well, and you're a natural. Seems like you've been doing this your whole life. Um, I. I will make sure that your LinkedIn is in the show notes. So if you're listening to this, just go click down below and check out garov. And on LinkedIn, I want to give a shout out to Katie as well from Soulcoms Co. Um, I'm gonna let her in.

Speaker B: She.

Speaker A: She came in about halfway through and wanted to sit on the conversation, but sometimes that could be distracting. I'm sorry, Katie, I had to keep you outside. Um, but I really appreciate the introduction. Um, Gaurav, have a wonderful day, and thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. Take care.

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