Spotlight on Joey: Building the Future of Children’s Healthcare

“We are building a world where every paediatric decision is powered by high-quality data, where healthcare experiences are designed for parents and children, and where excellent healthcare starts from day one.”

— Dr Abhinav Bhansali, co-founder, Joey

We take a look at how two exceptional entrepreneurs are capturing a multi-billion opportunity by tackling one of healthcare’s most neglected segments: Paediatrics

At Zinc, we back exceptional founders building businesses that can improve the health of millions. Few challenges are as urgent as how we support families through their children’s earliest years. Ensuring equity of access to high-quality care is critical – not only for children’s immediate wellbeing but also for the opportunities and healthier lives it enables as they grow. That’s why we’re proud to back Joey.

Founded by Dr. Abhinav Bhansali (Abhi) and Sasha Nagarajah, Joey is on track to redefine paediatric healthcare in the UK and far beyond.

A system under strain – and an opportunity for disruption

Parents frequently find navigating paediatric healthcare fragmented, stressful, and poorly supported. In the UK, this is compounded by a system not designed with children in mind: only about one in three GPs has received any postgraduate specialist paediatric training, paediatrician waiting lists average 18+ weeks, and as many as 80 per cent of A&E visits for children could be avoided with accessible alternatives and earlier intervention.

Parents need trusted, timely guidance from experienced paediatric clinicians. Healthcare systems need new models that reduce pressure on overstretched services. And children need care decisions that are based on the right data and expertise, not trial and error. These challenges are felt most acutely by families from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and ethnic minority communities, who often face greater barriers to accessing consistent, high-quality care, widening health inequalities that often have lasting impacts into adulthood.

The world is long overdue for a new way of doing paediatrics – and this is where Joey comes in.

Joey’s solution: Reimagining children’s health

Joey is a “paediatrician in your pocket”: the UK’s only regulated digital healthcare provider delivering safe, evidence-based, chat-first consultations with child health experts. By starting with parents of young children, Joey offers guidance and reassurance in the moments when it matters most, while also capturing the data and context that are usually lost in a traditional 10-minute appointment. The result is a model of care that is not only more convenient and affordable for families, but also safer, faster, more personalised, and better aligned with modern healthcare systems and parenting needs.

“As both an investor and a mother of three, I experienced first hand how transformative Joey is when I tested it with my children. My daughter Alma still talks about Joey’s brilliant suggestion which included star jumps and having an ice lolly! We partnered with them and backed this business because Joey combines genuine clinical expertise with an understanding of what families actually need. It is solving a problem that affects millions of parents every day – representing a huge commercial opportunity and a chance to make a real impact for so many families.”

— Ella Goldner, co-founder & general partner, Zinc

The journey from idea to impact

Since its founding less than two years ago, Joey has moved fast and achieved significant milestones. The platform began with a simple WhatsApp-based pilot to validate how parents would engage with chat-first healthcare. The response was immediate and compelling: families embraced the convenience and reassurance of expert guidance at their fingertips. Over the course of 10 months, Joey has delivered more than 600 hours of paediatric support to over 150 families learning what safe, effective care looks like in a chat environment.

Building on these insights, Abhi and Sasha took the ambitious decision to pursue full healthcare regulation – a rare and challenging path for an early-stage health startup. After a year of rigorous preparation, the company is now regulated as the UK’s only digital-only paediatric provider. This gives Joey both the clinical credibility to provide end-to-end care and a competitive moat in a sector where trust and safety are paramount. Alongside this, Joey has grown from Abhi answering questions himself to a scalable AI-supported model with trained first-responder clinicians and a panel of paediatricians, while also starting to establish B2B partnerships with nurseries and employee benefits platforms to expand distribution through trusted channels.

The founders behind the mission

Joey’s impressive progress to date is testament to the unique and complementary strengths of its founders. Abhi brings the dual perspective of a GP and a new father, combining clinical expertise with the lived experience of navigating care for his own baby. His background includes previous entrepreneurial ventures in healthcare, and he has seen first-hand both the frustrations and the opportunities in rethinking how medicine is delivered.

Sasha complements this with a deep track record in scaling early-stage, regulated businesses, honed during her years in fintech at Tide and Pave. She thrives in the ambiguity and intensity of the startup environment, with a product and operations mindset that balances Abhi’s clinical focus.

What makes them compelling co-founders is not just their complementary skills, but also the values that drive them: integrity in building within a regulated space, a relentless focus on delighting parents, and the ability to take the work seriously without taking themselves too seriously. The dynamic and alignment between them, forged during their early days as part of Zinc’s venture building cohort, has created an incredibly strong foundation for building a category-defining company.

Unlocking a global opportunity

The market opportunity in paediatric healthcare is vast and underserved. In the UK alone, there are more than five million A&E attendances by children each year, most of which could be safely avoided. Over 400,000 children are currently waiting to see a paediatrician, with average waits of 18 weeks. Parents are already spending significant sums privately on fragmented care that fails to meet their needs. Joey is uniquely positioned to address this gap by offering immediate, safe access to child health expertise at scale.

The implications go far beyond convenience. By keeping children out of unnecessary A&E visits and reducing unnecessary prescriptions, Joey could save the NHS hundreds of millions annually. By supporting working parents, it offers clear value to employers navigating retention and wellbeing challenges. And by using cutting edge technology to capture the 99 per cent of child health that happens outside the clinic, Joey is building a dataset with enormous potential for innovation in paediatric care.

In short, the opportunity combines commercial scale with social impact in a way few markets do.

Joey now has its sights on growing its reach through partnerships and word of mouth, and partnering with the right mission-aligned investors to unlock this next phase of scale. The team is doubling down on building the best chat-based clinical service for families while developing the technology that can make every consultation smarter than the last. Their ambition is bold: to become the default companion for families navigating child health, and in time to power every paediatric decision made worldwide.

Why Zinc is backing Joey

Zinc is proud to be Joey’s first investor-partner. It has been clear from day one that Abhi and Sasha are building something that is both urgently needed and enormously scalable. Their decision to go through the hard yards of regulation, their ability to learn fast from real families, and their vision of powering every paediatric decision positions Joey to become a category-defining company.

The commercial opportunity is huge. The health impact is even greater. And the timing – with families, clinicians, and systems all crying out for better models – for a brand new approach to paediatrics is now.

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Joey is raising a pre-seed round to accelerate growth and build technology that enables 80% of parent concerns to be initially managed at home. Abhi and Sasha are seeking angel investors with deep operator experience in healthcare, regulated industries, or B2B2C platforms – investors who are passionate about tackling complex health problems and improving outcomes for children.

To connect with Abhi and Sasha, please contact: abhinav@askjoeynow.com and sasha@askjoeynow.com.