CEO Spotlight Interview
Simplifying and Streamlining Patient Access to Life-Saving Specialty Treatments
Avish Bhama, CEO & Founder, Klinic
Founder Background
Avish Bhama was born in India, grew up in Michigan, and has spent most of his adult life working on startups based in SF, NYC, and now Dallas. He was drawn to build in healthcare after experiencing firsthand how painful the system is. That frustration became Klinic — a direct-to-consumer marketplace for specialty therapeutics. Over the past few years, the company has built a nationwide provider network of 160 providers and a payor network of 175 health plans, and now sees over 100,000 patients per month come to the site looking for specialty treatments.
“I was drawn to build in healthcare after experiencing how painful the system is.”
“We make it easy for patients to access life-saving treatments in record time at an affordable rate.”
The Founding of Klinic
Klinic was founded after Avish Bhama experienced the healthcare system's friction firsthand. What began as a personal frustration became a mission: make it easy for patients to access life-saving treatments in record time at an affordable rate. Over several years of focused building, Klinic assembled the infrastructure that makes that mission possible — a nationwide network of 160 providers, 175 health plans, and a platform that now serves over 100,000 patients per month. By leveraging AI to automate the human-in-the-loop processes traditionally required to facilitate specialty care, Klinic turned a painfully manual industry into a seamless end-to-end experience.
The Problems Being Solved with AI-Enabled Specialty Access
Klinic serves four constituencies at once. Patients get a one-stop shop 'search to script to fill' checkout experience for life-changing drugs that are often high-friction — diabetes, addiction medications, psychiatry treatments, and chronic-care therapeutics. Providers join the MSO network to access patients, integrated billing, and automated prior-auth support. Pharmacies reduce friction and costs via automated benefits verification and prior authorization. And pharma brands gain measurable funnel analytics — conversion, geography, denial reasons — to accelerate treatment starts and mitigate the GTM adoption risk of each new treatment they launch.
“We've leveraged AI to automate the human-in-the-loop processes that are traditionally required to facilitate these services.”
By unifying all four stakeholders on a single platform, Klinic eliminates the coordination gaps that have historically made specialty therapeutics so difficult to access. What was once a fragmented, manual process — spanning prior authorizations, benefits verification, provider coordination, and patient navigation — becomes a streamlined, automated experience. The result is faster treatment starts, lower costs, and better outcomes for patients who need it most.
A Future-Forward Partnership: Klinic and Tau Ventures
The team at Tau are entrepreneurs themselves, so they deeply understand founders and the startup journey. Beyond that, they are extraordinarily helpful when it comes to networking within the healthcare industry, bringing sector knowledge that shows up in every interaction. It is evident they very much care for their portfolio — and that comes through with every conversation.