Minding Other People's Business

Ahead of online mental health counseling start-ups’ path to bask in investors’ glory, lies two fundamental bottlenecks. And they aren’t about burn rate, customer acquisition, market size or technology etc.

- Sandeep Soni

Before diving down to that, let’s touch upon on what’s driving the growing chorus for such counseling platforms. Apart from the obvious figures quoted by World Health Organisation last year - around 94 million Indians suffers from some or the other mental issues such as depression of various types and anxiety disorders - there is a lack of accessible treatment. That’s because first, hospitals are not interested in investing time and resources in the space as there is no in-patient revenue for them. “A hospital thrives on the revenue from operation theatre but for mental health treatment there is hardly any surgery involved,” says Davesh Manocha who launched Juno Clinic - online clinic for mental wellness along with Arun Kumar and Anuraag Srivastava.

Second, almost 80 percent of India’s top psychologists and psychiatrists are scattered across top five-six cities. This means no basic access to mental health therapists beyond these cities and hence, online treatment is the only alternative. Third, as families are getting nuclear, talking to the family members is getting improbable today. “Mental health issues could be taken care of by talking to someone in a joint family set up but now there is only so much that can be done,” says Dr Amit Malik, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, InnerHour and a trained psychiatrist since over a decade.

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