“We’re trying to make top-tier proactive health accessible to the masses,” says Sameer Dhar, CEO and co-founder of NiaHealth.
In conversation at Inventures 2025, Dhar laid out a stark contrast in Canadian healthcare: while preventative care is widely understood to be crucial, only a small fraction of physician time is spent on it. NiaHealth wants to change this approach, offering technology-enabled health assessments starting at $299. The company is betting on a new model that brings executive-level diagnostics into the homes of everyday Canadians. And this bet is paying off, with the company announcing the close of its $5.75 million seed round at the end of June.
Dhar offers a window into how NiaHealth is working to shift Canadian healthcare from reactive treatment to proactive prevention. By grounding its model in clinical research, product design, and policy alignment, the company is scaling a service that complements the public system rather than competing with it. Dhar’s approach highlights how tech-driven health solutions can align with national goals, staying rooted in user needs and long-term sustainability.
[Watch the interview in full in the video below]
Adapting preventative care to Canadian guidelines
NiaHealth’s core offer is a data-rich, blood-based checkup that screens users for up to 50 biomarkers, delivered through in-home phlebotomy services. The results are returned in an online dashboard that lets users track health trends over time and act on individualized recommendations.
But the real innovation, according to Dhar, is not in the lab tests. It’s in the model.
“Canadian guidelines differ from every other geography,” says Dhar. “So what a person actually gets access to in the Canadian context, versus the US, versus any other OECD country… [is] completely different.”
NiaHealth has built a clinical research team to ensure every test offered is grounded in Canadian science and policy. The company does not offer tests like the genetics-driven marker APOE4 for Alzheimer’s risk, for example, because, as Dhar says, “we don’t believe that the literature is robust enough around what [you can] actually do with that information.” He also points to the need for proper counselling to be in place to help a patient manage the outcome of such a test.
“For every marker that we test, we go through a very, very rigorous process,” he says. “One of the key criteria is, is it actionable? Can the person actually do something about it? Otherwise, why test it?”
This emphasis on utility and contextual design sets NiaHealth apart from health tech companies trying to transplant American models into Canada. It also signals a wider shift in the country’s innovation landscape: more startups are building for Canadian realities rather than defaulting to Silicon Valley blueprints.
Why stealth made sense for NiaHealth’s early growth
Designing for Canada’s healthcare system required more than clinical alignment. It also meant taking a different path to market, avoiding the spotlight until the product was ready to deliver real value.
NiaHealth spent more than a year in stealth mode, resisting the common startup playbook of early press and rapid fundraising. Dhar says the decision was about putting first principles and evidence-based product development ahead of marketing.
“We want to base our product in first principles, [and] make sure that we built a really good product experience, and stayed away from the hype,” he says.
That included a hands-on approach to customer experience. In fact, Dhar still personally concierges client journeys to stay close to the user base. The company’s initial growth came from founder hustle, with family and friends as early users. As the product matured, word-of-mouth and product-led growth became the engine.
“If you create an experience that’s special enough,” he says, “they start to attract their friends that are relevant, and then your ICP becomes more and more defined, and then you can throw fuel on paid marketing and other marketing channels after that.”
Now serving thousands of customers across the country, NiaHealth is set to reach 85 percent of the Canadian population within weeks. The company reports that 90 percent of users uncover at least one new health risk, with 20 percent flagged for genetics-driven cardiovascular disease and 25 percent for diabetes or prediabetes. Most are now following action plans to mitigate those risks.
Complementing, not competing with, public healthcare
Preventative care has long been a policy aspiration in Canada, but scaling it has proven difficult. NiaHealth’s approach avoids direct disruption to the public system, aiming to bridge the gap between discovery and follow-up, guiding users toward primary care with clear next steps based on national guidelines.
“We take our duty to the system, and to Canadians as a whole, super seriously,” says Dhar. “We [honour] what the public system is meant to do… but if we talk about empowering a whole new way of delivering health care in a preventative way, that’s where we see our role.”
Each user receives a summary letter outlining findings and suggested next steps, which they can bring to their doctor or clinic. For those who encounter resistance from providers unfamiliar with third-party results, NiaHealth offers optional clinician consultations to help interpret and act on the data.
Importantly, Dhar stresses that users retain full control of their information. “We do not sell any and nor will we sell any data to third parties,” he says. “We don’t actually share your information with insurers or even the public system, for that matter. We’re going to empower you with your own data, but then it’s you who gets to decide what you want to do with it.”
Balancing ambition with sustainability
For Dhar, building the company has also meant rethinking what sustainable leadership looks like the second time around.
His previous company, which developed eldercare tech, led him to live in nursing homes for a year across North America. That experience planted the seed for NiaHealth by showing him how hard it is to improve life once chronic illness has already taken hold.
Still, he says, the second time around is no easier.
“It actually feels remarkably similar from a feeling perspective as the first journey,” he says. “It’s just as difficult. There’s a whole new set of challenges and circumstances.”
One difference this time is a greater awareness of founder sustainability. While he still dives deep into customer experience, Dhar is more mindful of building a model that won’t burn out the team.
“You need to create a sustainable model at the same time, one that doesn’t necessarily burn out yourself and the rest of your team,” he says. “So that we can collectively make a big impact over time.”
For now, Dhar’s focus is on user adoption, retention, and product-led growth within Canada. The U.S. market can wait.
That clarity of focus, rooted in the needs and constraints of the Canadian system, may be what sets NiaHealth up to succeed where other preventative care efforts have stalled.
Watch the interview:
