What You Should Know:
– Cancer patients don’t just fight the disease – they fight the system. Today, life-saving treatments are routinely delayed by days or even weeks due to manual, error-prone workflows
– To solve this, RISA Labs has raised a $3.5M funding round to help healthcare organizations eliminate one of the most persistent barriers to timely cancer care: prior authorization delays. RISA Labs has already proven that faster care is possible by dramatically reducing manual workflows and administrative burden.
RISA Secures Funding to Revolutionize Oncology Operations with AI-Driven Workflow Orchestration
RISA, a Silicon Valley-based startup founded by IIT Kanpur alumni and serial entrepreneurs Kshitij Jaggi (CEO) and Kumar Shivang (CTO), is pioneering a systems-first approach to healthcare automation. Drawing from their experience scaling Urban Health, the duo developed RISA to address the fragmented, slow, and error-prone workflows that plague today’s healthcare institutions. Their vision centers on building a foundational AI operating system that can simulate, understand, and orchestrate end-to-end institutional workflows—particularly in the oncology space.
At the core of RISA’s innovation is the Business Operating System as a Service (BOSS)—a full-stack orchestration engine purpose-built for the vertical complexity of healthcare. Unlike traditional automation bots or AI assistants, BOSS:
- Breaks down complex workflows into micro-tasks
- Delegates these tasks to a network of intelligent agents, including large language models (LLMs), digital twins, and reinforcement learners
- Integrates seamlessly with the institution’s entire software stack
This architecture enables the creation of a parallel digital workforce that operates both independently and alongside human teams. For example, in a leading U.S. cancer center, BOSS reduced prior authorization times from 30 minutes to under five, processed over $1 million in medication approvals, freed up 80% of staff time, and cut administrative costs by 66%.
The platform addresses a critical pain point in oncology: prior authorizations, which remain among the least automated components of the healthcare system. According to Ben Freeberg, Managing Partner at Oncology Ventures, delays in authorization affect 70% of cancer patients, with one-third of those delays lasting a month—potentially increasing the risk of death by up to 13% in certain cancers. RISA’s solution aims to eliminate this inefficiency and the dangers it presents.
RISA’s long-term vision extends beyond prior authorizations. The company aims to become the AI transformation partner across the entire oncology ecosystem, facilitating coordination and intelligence-sharing between:
- Providers
- Life sciences organizations
- Other key stakeholders in the drug development and delivery pipeline
By doing so, RISA seeks to establish a unified orchestration layer for oncology operations, reshaping both clinical and operational workflows at scale.
To accelerate deployment, RISA has raised a seed round led by Binny Bansal (co-founder of Flipkart), with participation from Oncology Ventures, General Catalyst, z21 Ventures, ODD BIRD VC, and Ashish Gupta. The funding will support the expansion of RISA’s platform to 100 additional cancer centers nationwide over the next two years.
With this strategic funding and an ambitious roadmap, RISA is positioned to redefine how cancer care is delivered—digitally doubling institutional capacity and improving patient outcomes through intelligent automation.
