A free, patient-first platform that turns the chaos of a diagnosis - the appointments, the meds, the 2am questions - into something you can actually navigate.
Here is a fact about cancer that no one puts in the brochure: a large part of it is administrative. There is the disease, which is terrifying, and then there is the paperwork around the disease, which is merely maddening, and the two arrive at the same time. Manta Cares is a startup built on the observation that the second problem is, unlike the first, actually a software problem.
The founder, Samira Daswani, arrived at this the hard way. A week after she turned 30, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She then did what a McKinsey-trained, MIT-and-Stanford-educated product person does under stress, which is to count things. Over 18 months she tallied 123 appointments, 14 clinicians, seven biopsies, five ER visits, two insurance plans, and 18 infusions. The number that mattered most, though, was zero - the number of tools she was handed to keep any of it straight.
This is the kind of gap that is invisible until you are standing in it. The medical system is, understandably, organized around treating the tumor. It is not organized around the person who has to remember which of 14 clinicians said what, or whether the new symptom is the normal kind of bad or the call-someone kind of bad. That coordination work gets quietly offloaded onto the patient, who is, at that exact moment, the least equipped person in the building to do it.
Manta Cares is Daswani's attempt to hand that person a tool. The product is a free, HIPAA-compliant app that tracks symptoms, medications, appointments, and decisions, wraps them in oncologist-reviewed guidance, and - in its signature move - renders the whole treatment journey as a subway-style map. Not a metaphor for a pitch deck. An actual map, with stops and lines, because a transit map is the standard human technology for making an overwhelming system legible.
The business detail that makes people lean in is the price. It is free to the patient, and stays free. That is not a launch promotion; it is the model. Manta makes its money from the institutions - pharmaceutical manufacturers, health systems, advocacy groups - and keeps the paywall away from the scared person holding the phone. Whether that is idealism or unusually good distribution strategy is a fair question, and the honest answer is probably both.
Subway-style maps that plot where you are in treatment and what decision is coming next - the chaotic journey drawn as a route you can read.
An evidence-based planner, on paper and in the app, with a collaborative appointment notebook plus symptom and medication tracking you can share with your care partner.
An AI-powered assistant that answers questions in plain language, grounded in clinically reviewed content rather than the open internet at 2am.
Free and HIPAA-compliant on iOS and Android - your resources, tracking, and next steps in a pocket, where the panic actually happens.
Cancer education and decision support reviewed by 100+ oncologists, nurses, and navigators, covering financial stress, mental health, and insurance.
The company's candid podcast, hosted by Daswani - which won a Digital Health Award before the platform even launched publicly.
Thirteen people. At launch, Manta Cares reported the kind of institutional footprint that usually takes a much bigger company - a sign that solving a narrow, real problem travels further than solving a vague one.
Bars scaled for illustration; figures reported by the company at its November 2025 launch.
Before Manta, Daswani had the resume of someone who builds hard things in health: degrees from MIT, Wellesley College, and a Stanford master's in healthcare design; a stint consulting at McKinsey; company-building inside healthcare venture capital; and a run as VP of Product at Visby Medical, where she launched a multimillion-dollar infectious-disease test. Then a diagnosis taught her the one thing none of that had - what it feels like to be the patient inside the machine she'd been building for.
- On battling the disease and a broken system at the same time
She did not build it alone. To make the clinical claims stick, Manta recruited Dr. Douglas Blayney, a former president of ASCO, as Chief Medical Officer, and stood up a team across data and AI, engineering, and design. In health, trust is the product - and you don't bolt it on after the fact.
An oversubscribed $5.4M round led by Pear VC and Sozo Ventures, with participation from 1843 Capital and strategic angels across oncology, health tech, and patient advocacy.
Dr. Stanley Marks - Chair of UPMC Hillman Cancer Center and founder of Via Oncology - joined the round, the kind of clinical backer who does not lend a name lightly.
Investors backing a company that charges its users nothing is the counterintuitive part. The bet is that free is the distribution channel - that trust and reach, not a subscription, are what compound in oncology.
The signature feature borrows the visual language of transit maps to make cancer treatment legible.
Daswani was diagnosed with breast cancer just seven days after her 30th birthday.
MIT, Wellesley, and a Stanford master's in healthcare design - plus McKinsey and Visby Medical.
"Patient from Hell" won a Digital Health Award before the platform's public launch.
Dr. Douglas Blayney oversees a bench of 100+ medical experts.
Patients pay nothing; institutions do. The pricing is the product decision.
Video links point to Manta Cares' public channels; specific demo clips may vary over time.
Facts drawn from public sources including mantacares.com, OncoDaily, FinSMEs, Femtech Insider, and PRWeb. Figures are as reported at the company's November 2025 launch and may change.