Regulated markets
Fractional CTO for Healthtech Startups
I built SYNCHFIT, an AI fitness product, which put me squarely in the space where health data, machine learning, and consumer expectations collide. Healthtech is the market where the technical decisions you make in month one are the hardest to reverse in year two.
The pattern I see repeatedly: a team ships fast, wins a pilot with a provider or an employer, and then discovers that PHI is scattered across six systems with no audit trail and no BAA in sight. Unwinding that costs more than building it right did.
What I'm hired to own
The decisions that are cheap now and expensive later
PHI leaks into systems that were never scoped for it
Analytics tools, log aggregators, error trackers, LLM providers, spreadsheets. I draw an explicit data boundary, get PHI out of everything that does not need it, and make sure every vendor that touches it has a BAA in place, before a security review finds it for you.
You cannot prove who accessed what
HIPAA expects an audit trail. Bolting immutable, queryable access logging onto a live system is painful; designing for it up front costs almost nothing. I make that call early.
Interoperability decides which deals you can close
FHIR and HL7 support is the difference between a pilot and a health system contract. I scope what you actually need now versus what can wait, so you are not building an integration layer for customers you do not have yet.
SOC 2 arrives with your first enterprise deal
Providers and payers will ask. I sequence the controls so you pass when it matters instead of stalling a signed deal for four months.
AI features in a clinical context need a defensible story
If a model output influences care, you need to explain the training data, the evaluation, the human-in-the-loop, and the failure mode. I build that record as you go rather than reconstructing it under pressure.
How an engagement runs
Week one, month one, month three
Week 1
I find out what is actually true
Architecture review, codebase read, and honest conversations with every engineer you have. You get a written assessment at the end of it: what is solid, what is risky, what is going to break, and what it costs to fix each one. No slide deck, just a document you can act on.
Month 1
The bleeding stops and the roadmap becomes real
I fix or contain the things from week one that were actually urgent, and rebuild the technical roadmap so it has dates you can believe. If you are hiring, the role is written and the interview loop exists. If you are pre-launch, scope gets cut, usually by a lot.
Month 3
It runs without me in the room
Ship cadence is predictable, the team knows the standard, security and infrastructure are at the level your customers expect, and the decisions are documented. If the engagement is a bridge to a full-time CTO, this is where I start hiring my replacement.
Why me, for this specifically
Experience, not a capabilities deck
Plenty of people can advise on healthtech. Fewer have shipped in it, been wrong in it, and had to fix it with their own name on the commit. Here's what I'm bringing.
- Built SYNCHFIT, an AI-driven fitness and health product
- M.Tech in Cybersecurity: access control and data protection are the core discipline
- Experience taking regulated products through enterprise security review
- Full-stack: I write the code, not just the policy document
Pricing
Priced at $100 an hour. Not counted at it.
I value my time at $100 an hour and the retainers are sized from that, but the hours are a floor I commit to rather than a cap I bill against. If a week needs more, it gets more. A full-time CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity; I'll do that job for $60,000 at 150% commitment. Three-month minimum, then month to month.
It does not all have to be cash. The split is negotiable, from a small equity component up to roughly half and half, depending on your stage and how long we expect to work together.
Technical Advisor
$1,500
per month
Minimum 15+ hours a month
A senior technical brain on call. For founders who mostly need the big decisions checked rather than someone in the codebase.
Fractional CTO
$5,000
per month
Minimum 50+ hours a month
Around 50 hours a month as your acting CTO, usually two days a week. I own technical direction, and the roadmap ships because someone senior is accountable for it.
Embedded CTO
$8,000
per month
Minimum 80+ hours a month
Around 80 hours a month, usually three days a week, hands on the keyboard. Everything above, plus I build the hard parts myself instead of delegating them.
Questions
Healthtech, specifically
Are you a HIPAA compliance consultant?
No. I am the engineering leader who makes the architecture compliant. For formal audits and legal sign-off you want a specialist firm, and I work alongside them. What I own is making sure the system they audit is actually built correctly. I am a security-first engineer with a Masters in the field, and getting a company compliance-ready is the work itself rather than a side effect of it.
Can you help us pass a health system's security review?
Yes. I have taken products through enterprise security questionnaires and know which answers block deals. Most of the work is done months before the questionnaire arrives.
We want to add AI to a clinical workflow. Where do we start?
With the failure mode, not the model. What happens when it is wrong, who reviews it, and what is logged. Get that right and the model choice is the easy part.
More general questions about cost, commitment, and how this compares to a full-time CTO are answered on the main fractional CTO page.
Earned, Not Claimed
What the founders and teams I build with say
I had the pleasure of working with Kunal while building out my MVP and I have to say that it was pleasure to both interact and work with him and his team. As a first time founder, I had a lot of self doubt and internal ruptures, however Kunal's calm, never-say-die and never-panic attitude often helped bring me back to center. I can't vouch for him enough.
Anand Tahiliani
Founder, Debaser Technologies
I had the pleasure of working closely with Kunal during my time as a Product Manager at DhunGuru. As our CTO, Kunal and his team at Panicle Tech worked closely with me across the entire product journey, from building and launching our mobile apps to developing and maintaining our web platforms. His technical expertise, ownership, and willingness to collaborate made a real difference, and I genuinely enjoyed working with him throughout the journey.
Anirudh Joshi
Product Manager, DhunGuru
Kunal helped us architect Mosler's core platform, connecting smart lock hardware, our cloud dashboard, and PMS integrations into one reliable system. The foundation he helped design in those early days still scales with us today.
Pranav Kapoor
Co-Founder, Mosler
Building in healthtech? Let's talk.
Thirty minutes. Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck, and I'll give you a straight answer on whether I can help.
Book a 30-min callSend me a message