Founder Spotlight: Sameer Dhar (NiaHealth)

Welcome to a very special edition of Golden Age of Technology. This week I had the privilege of interviewing Sameer Dhar, founder of NiaHealth: the partner that empowers health-conscious individuals to take ownership of their health. We discussed Sameer’s experiences building Sensassure and evaluating a “graveyard” of ideas before getting the conviction to build NiaHealth. I hope you enjoy learning about the NiaHealth approach to supporting healthspan as much as I did!

— Sarah Richard

P.S. - If you’re an AgeTech founder, investor, or operator based in the NYC area, please consider joining us live at the May AgeTech NYC meetup.

Sameer, tell us about your journey into age tech leading up to NiaHealth.

Sameer Dhar: I stumbled into age tech somewhat by accident but also through serendipitous exploration. After college, I joined an accelerator called The Next 36, which provided seed funding and mentorship.  I was interested in entrepreneurship but wanted to make a social impact. I dove into healthcare, exploring various problems, and eldercare caught my attention due to its outdated practices and immense potential for improvement.

I started by interviewing and shadowing key players in senior living communities, and learned that the 2-3 hour check-and-change procedure to care for older adult incontinence wasn’t working. There was a lack of adherence that I only found after actually living in a facility in full immersion for 12 months. I built Sensassure to address incontinence, a common yet overlooked issue, by developing a sensor-based solution that allowed for real-time, personalized care. This project convinced me of the importance of doing extreme things to be one with your user. 

What inspired you to move from Sensassure to founding NiaHealth?

Sameer Dhar: Living in senior living to better understand user needs was transformative. It shifted my focus from treating symptoms to preventing them - and helping older adults avoid institutional settings altogether. With NiaHealth, I aim to extend healthspan and improve the quality of life through preventative measures rather than just making old age bearable. We are seeing organic interest across age and income demographics in proactive health management that can significantly delay or prevent the chronic conditions typically associated with aging. 

What challenges did you face on the road to starting NiaHealth and how did you overcome them?

Sameer Dhar: Before starting NiaHealth, I evaluated and rejected more than 30 ideas based on initial discovery. You have a higher bar as a second time founder because you know how hard it’ll be and you want to avoid the mistakes you made the first time around. Mentally, preserving the beginner’s mindset is a huge challenge I didn’t expect.

The general challenge in AgeTech is distribution. From my experience with Sensassure, I learned that having a great product isn't enough; you need effective distribution to match. For NiaHealth, we focused heavily on initial customer discovery to validate the demand across different demographics. While creating a product experience is still at the center of what we focus on, we have placed an emphasis on experimenting with different distribution paths from the earliest days.

What’s next for NiaHealth? What are you excited about?

Sameer Dhar: I’m excited about the growing recognition of healthspan as a critical component of healthcare. The discourse is shifting from talking about longevity as the goal, to talking about healthspan as the goal. There are a lot of influencers like Peter Attia, Andrew Huberman, and Mark Hyman at the forefront of doubling down on the science and communicating that broadly. I’m excited about the very recent update to the cultural zeitgeist, and the trend toward focusing on healthspan we’ll see globally over the next 5-10 years. I’m also excited at the prospect of bringing the cost of next-gen care down to a point that increasing proportions of the population can afford - today, the very wealthy can access best-in-class proactive health through expensive memberships, but we at NiaHealth are driven to create a solution that is eventually accessible to all.

We’ve started by proving our concept with over 100 customers this quarter, showing significant early successes in identifying previously-undiagnosed conditions and risks which, when managed, can extend healthspan and improve life quality. I’m looking forward to our upcoming work to become a true and ongoing partner to our customers (vs. a one-time test solution), and scaling our distribution.

The Future of Aging

Sameer’s work with NiaHealth is a testament to the power of preventive health care and the significant impact thoughtful technology can have on our quality of life as we age. His approach—focusing on preemptive measures rather than reactive treatments—promises to redefine how we think about aging and health care. Sameer and the NiaHealth team’s dedication to extending healthspan is not just about adding years to life but about adding life to years. 

Stay tuned for more stories and insights in the next edition!

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