Interview #5 of our St. Patrick's Day series…

India Healy O’Connor is the co-founder and CEO of Linda AI, a voice AI agent handling appointment bookings, patient queries, and scheduling for dental practices. Built with her sister Portia and co-founder Lucio Tudisco, Linda AI is already live in over 50 locations across Ireland and the UK, and just closed a €2.6 million pre-seed round in February 2026.

Stay tuned for the remaining interviews over the coming week and keep an eye out for our St. Patrick's Day newsletter, where we reveal the full results of our survey with over 120 Irish founders across the globe.

I’m India, the Co-Founder and CEO of Linda AI. I previously worked at Goldman Sachs in interest rate sales and I am a Sequoia Arc Europe '22 alum. I bring deep experience in high-pressure, revenue-driven environments and focus on building scalable operations-led businesses. I lead company strategy, fundraising, and enterprise partnerships at Linda AI.

Linda AI is a Dublin and London-based healthtech startup building AI-powered front desk solutions for the dental industry. Founded in 2025 by myself and my sister Portia alongside Lucio Tudisco. The company develops voice AI agents that handle appointment bookings, patient queries, rescheduling, confirmations, and deposits - integrating directly with practice management systems and phone lines. Linda AI is currently live in over 50 locations across Ireland and the UK and raised €2.6 million in pre-seed funding in February 2026, led by 6 Degrees Capital. The company is a graduate of the NDRC Accelerator programme in Dublin.

Absolutely. We've just closed our €2.6m pre-seed led by 6 Degrees Capital, we're live in over 50 locations across Ireland and the UK, and the results speak for themselves - one in four new patient bookings at our partner clinics now come through Linda, no-shows are down 30%, and overall bookings are up 15%.

Dental practices are still overwhelmingly reliant on the phone, and more than a quarter of inbound calls go unanswered. That's a huge problem with a clear solution. The demand signal from practices has been strong, and we're only scratching the surface - there are over 12,500 dental practices in the UK alone.

What's been particularly exciting is the patient reception. Patients are genuinely curious. We hear stories from clinics about patients finishing a call and then ringing back just to say how cool it was that they'd booked with an AI. Some even ask to speak to Linda again. That reaction tells you something important: when the experience is good, people don't just tolerate AI - they enjoy it.

I think that comes down to how we think about Linda internally. She's not an "it." She's not a bot. She's a she. That might sound like a small distinction, but it shapes everything like how we design her conversations, how we train her responses, how we talk about her with clinics. Linda is a member of the team, and patients feel that.

First, scaling our presence in the UK and looking at the US market. We're already working with some of the largest dental groups in the UK including those backed by PE firms and want to continue expanding to dentists of all sizes. Growing quickly in that market is a major focus.

Second, accelerating product development. We're building AI agents that can have a real impact on operations and revenue - optimising schedules, intelligently managing cancellations, and getting patients back in the door in ways that simply weren't possible before. The goal is for Linda to be the reason a practice is running at full capacity, not just answering the phone. Finally, growing our sales and engineering functions to really accelerate growth. We always want to be working with ambitious, intelligent, and hungry talent.

The pace of change in AI. The technology is evolving incredibly fast, and when you're building a vertical AI product for a complex, regulated space like dentistry, you need to stay on top of every new development - new models, new capabilities, new best practices - and constantly evaluate how they can make your product better. The challenge is making sure we're always building the best possible product for our vertical, not just keeping up but staying ahead. That's what our customers depend on, and it's what will separate the winners from everyone else in this space.

We've just completed our pre-seed, so it's fresh in my mind. It's never easy - fundraising requires real orchestration - but we were well-prepped. We ran a super tight process, had huge momentum behind us, and knew exactly how to present it. Having strong traction made those conversations much more concrete. I'd say the environment is favourable for vertical AI companies with real revenue and measurable impact.

Hugely.

Ireland was the perfect launchpad - it's a smaller market where you can build close relationships with clinics, iterate quickly, and prove your model before scaling internationally. We came through the NDRC Accelerator in Dublin, which gave us great early-stage support, and what we've built here translates well as we expand.

Beyond that, when you grow up on a smaller island, you default to looking outward - you think internationally from the start and you're naturally well-connected. Ireland also punches well above its weight in tech, and the founder community is incredibly supportive. People make introductions, share learnings, and genuinely want to help each other succeed.

On a personal level, growing up around our dad's medical practice here gave Portia and I firsthand insight into healthcare admin that inspired Linda in the first place. Building a company with your sister is something people always ask about, and it's one of our biggest advantages. We know how each other thinks, we can be completely direct with one another, and there's an implicit trust that just makes everything faster. Having Lucio as our third co-founder is the perfect balance. He brings a completely different perspective and skill set, and the way the three of us work together as a team is something I'm really proud of. We each own our lane, we challenge each other, and we move quickly. That dynamic is a huge part of why we've been able to get to where we are.

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