Company Overview
Sanat Mohapatra is Co-Founder & COO of Vasquez, the all-in-one platform for health insurance agencies, brokers, and TPAs. Learn more at vasquezplatform.com/home.
Can you tell us a little about your background before starting at your company?
Back in 2016, while I was at Dartmouth, I built a mental health startup called Unmasked, kind of like Reddit for mental health. We scaled it to 15,000 students across 46 schools. After that, I started an AI software consulting company, Qualibar, with my dad. We worked with enterprise clients like PwC and QVC, and took on a few health insurance clients from my co-founder’s network. I’d been through the wringer personally with surgeries and claims, so I was drawn to making the member experience less confusing and more affordable.
How did you start at your company? What were the first steps you took to get it off the ground and how did you identify the need for your product/service in the market?
Vasquez spun out of our consulting work at Qualibar. We kept seeing antiquated legacy systems and heavy manual work across the full broker lifecycle, from commissions reconciliation to member service. Rather than stitching together existing point solutions, we saw the opportunity to build Vasquez as an end-to-end, AI-native operating system for health insurance agencies and brokers, one that lets an agency scale without adding headcount.
What innovations or unique features set your company apart from others in the industry?
We’ve built Victoria, Vasquez’s full-service AI copilot. The idea is to augment the team, not replace people. She answers member questions in seconds, recovers revenue from complex commissions statements, and automates renewals, all with a human in the loop. Her real edge is capturing how a client’s team thinks and operates, and folding that back into the model so it beats anything off-the-shelf. We’re currently working with an FMO to migrate 35,000 members onto the platform, with a lot to learn as their downstream agencies, agents, and members start interacting with Victoria.
What has been the most effective strategy for scaling your business?
Insurance is very much a relationship business. Everyone knows each other, so most of our clients have come through referrals, conferences, and our own networks. We’ve made it easy to drop our AI into an agency’s existing software stack, so the entry point is low and the value shows up fast. From there, growth tends to compound: a client starts with the one workflow that hurts most, sees it work, and expands Victoria across the rest of their operation.
Looking ahead, what are your goals for the future of your company?
We think the future of insurance distribution is both human and AI-driven. As our models improve, we’re excited to automate the routine admin, the data entry, document review, and follow-up, so an agency can spend most of its time with clients, where judgment and relationships actually matter.
