Ajay grew up in Bangalore chasing free pizza at hackathons, trained as a machine-learning researcher, and never planned to start a company until his brother’s accident and a nightmare healthcare experience in New York pushed him to build Coral Health.
In this episode of Unstarted by Z47, Ajay sits down with Anish to break down how Coral is killing traditional RPA (robotic process automation) and cutting US healthcare wait times from 14–25 days down to under 5 minutes. We go deep on workflow automation vs. “thin AI wrappers,” why the fax machine still runs American healthcare in 2026, how to tell real customer feedback from polite feedback (The Mom Test), pricing on value (the 10x rule), closing your first customer on the way to the airport, and the co-founder he recruited 5 minutes before a VC meeting.
If you’re a technologist wondering how to turn deep expertise into a real business, this one’s for you.
🎧 Unstarted is the podcast for founders, by founders - from Z47, India’s oldest venture capital firm.
00:00 kill RPA, care in under 5 minutes
01:00 San Francisco & meet Ajay of Coral Health
01:45 What Coral Health does: two missions
03:00 Born in California, raised in Bangalore
04:30 Free pizza at hackathons: the love for tech
08:00 The brother's accident & stages of grief
10:00 Falling in love with the RPA problem by accident
13:00 The friend's gallbladder & the broken patient journey
16:00 Stress-testing the idea like a scientist
18:30 $5–7 to maintain every $1 of RPA
24:00 Closing the first customer on the way to the airport
26:00 The Mom Test: real feedback vs. polite feedback
31:30 Why healthcare still runs on fax machines in 2026
35:00 Why OCR fails: 55% accuracy on 720-page faxes
42:00 Why this is deep workflow automation, not a thin wrapper
44:00 Co-founders: the Aniket story (recruited in 5 minutes)
51:00 Advice to the unstarted: find a problem, solve it, have fun