For some entrepreneurs, innovation stems not just from ambition but from heartbreak. For Dubai-based Indian-origin founder Avinav Nigam, losing a close friend exposed the fragility of global healthcare systems and set him on a path to changing them. Today, Nigam is leading a healthcare recruitment revolution in the UAE through its artificial intelligence platform under its joint venture TERN Group.
A shocking tragedy
In 2022, Nigam watched from a London hospital bed as his colleagues battled leukemia. The 32-year-old, an Oxford-educated lawyer and one of the brightest minds in her circle, has spent the past five months battling cancer with chemotherapy at a top London hospital. Although she was able to beat the disease, she was soon asked by the NHS to free up beds due to workforce shortages. She died of a lung infection two days before she was supposed to return to work at IMMO Capital, the real estate platform she founded with Nigam. It wasn’t the cancer that defeated her, but the health care system’s inability to provide patients with optimal post-treatment care.
Find strong healthcare
This prompted Nigam to launch his third venture, TERN Group, which raised $24 million in Series A funding in September 2025. He discovered that the problem was not limited to the UK but spread across the globe. The shortage of healthcare workers is expected to reach 85 million by 2030, of which 20 million are employed in health and social care. Therefore, TERN Group launched a global talent mobility platform powered by artificial intelligence in 2023, which he calls AI-Native. It achieved $30 million in annual revenue within 24 months and attracted more than 650,000 professionals. TERN’s AI interview system can evaluate 28 different attributes for 80 professional nursing roles. The platform has achieved a retention rate of over 96% for employed healthcare workers and an 88% conversion rate from resumes to job opportunities. Most impressively, it reduces international healthcare recruitment time from 6-12 months to less than 10 weeks.
Revolutionizing healthcare in the UAE
The rise of TERN has drawn national attention. The company now competes with giants like Palantir for government-level workforce assessment contracts. It is catering to industries that major economies need to focus on. The demand is great. The UAE healthcare industry is expected to spend more than $50 billion by 2029, while Germany needs 40,000-50,000 nurses annually. This is where TERN comes in, providing ethical recruitment standards, zero-cost training and placement for healthcare workers. In the UAE, TERN’s system is helping the Emirates Health Services (EHS), which operates 134 hospitals and health centers, hire nurses, Gulf News reported. It conducts AI interviews, assesses clinical reasoning and identifies the best candidates, all remotely. Not only that, the platform also helps track professional growth over time, helping nurses plan their careers and develop leadership skills. TERN marks Nigam’s third major venture. An IIT Bombay alumnus, he previously co-founded Cars24 in India, a digital marketplace that allows sellers to receive dealer offers instantly and is currently valued at $3.2 billion. He later moved to the UK and founded IMMO Capital, Europe’s first technology-driven investment platform for single-family homes.Now, together with TERN, Nigam is focused on solving what he considers to be one of the world’s most pressing challenges – ensuring that healthcare systems can staff not only quickly but sustainably.
