AI Mental Health Startup Wysa Raises ₹ 15 Crores in Funding led by pi Ventures

Wysa, an AI conversational agent that has been shown to help improve mental health, announced that it has raised about $2m (Rs 15 crore) in a pre-Series A round of funding led by pi Ventures, with participation from Kae Capital and other investors. Wysa has raised an earlier round of $1.3 million in seed funding from Kae Capital and angel investors in 2017. The company plans to use this funding to further strengthen their technology and for expansion.

Founded by Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati three years ago, Wysa is an AI-based ‘emotionally intelligent’ bot, a virtual coach that combines empathetic listening with evidence-based therapeutic techniques like CBT, meditation and motivational interviewing, to make mental health accessible at scale.

Wysa has helped over 1.2 million people from 30+ countries, making it one of the global leaders in AI for mental health. It is recommended by the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and its efficacy has been validated through a peer reviewed study.

Jo Aggarwal, Co-Founder, Wysa, said, “Wysa has been co-designed by therapists, users, and designers over hundreds of iterations and 80 million conversations. What people want most is to feel heard, without judgement. Anonymity is key – people are scared to be seen or judged for what they are going through. We combine the free AI with unlimited support from a qualified therapist, still anonymously, over chat to make it easy to get help. We are delighted that our investors are partnering with us in this journey to make mental health accessible for everyone."

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, added, “Mental health could very well be the next big epidemic to hit the human race. Training more human therapists will not bridge the massive supply and demand gap. This is where Wysa powered by an AI engine comes in. It is scalable and is available for anyone to chat at any time in total privacy. We do believe that Wysa can create a zero-stigma pathway to support people who are struggling, and has a real chance of solving depression and mental health challenges at scale. We wish them all the very best and are grateful to be working with them."

pi Ventures' investment in Wysa comes within a few days after it led a $1 Mn seed funding of SwitchOn, an Edge-AI enabled Industrial IoT startup.

According to the WHO, one in four people in the world will be affected by mental health issues at some point in their lives. Around 450 million people currently suffer from such conditions, placing these among the leading causes of ill-health and disability worldwide. Waitlists in UK and Canada for therapy are over a year long. India has a 90% treatment gap. Innovations such as Wysa are critical to scale support. Already, over a million breakthroughs have happened on Wysa , an impact equivalent to about 3 million hours of in-person therapy.

pi Ventures is India’s first Applied Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT and Blockchain focused early stage venture fund. pi is a $33 Million fund based in Bangalore, India,. pi Ventures focuses on healthcare, logistics, retail, fin-tech and enterprise sectors. Backed by some of the leading entrepreneurs globally, pi Ventures brings hands-on product and entrepreneurial experience to the India venture investing ecosystem.

Touchkin Raises $1.3M in Seed Funding for Its Mental Health Chatbot ‘WYSA’

Wysa, a little penguin that sits in your phone and helps you face whatever life throws at you, has raised a total of $1.3 million in seed funding from early stage investment firm Kae Capital and angel investors.

Created as an AI coach for behavioural and mental health, Wysa offers evidence-based techniques through empathetic, anonymous conversations. So far, it has had over 3 million conversations with people from 30 countries. “In the last month, three people wrote to us to say that Wysa saved their life. It blew our minds that by providing an empathetic ear, even an AI bot could help people hold on when they felt they had no one to turn to,” said Jo Aggarwal, co-founder and CEO.

Wysa’s AI may not replace therapists, but it can reach people across barriers of geography, culture and language. It may be the only hope for many in countries like India, where there are less than 5,000 mental health professionals to serve 1.2 billion people. Globally, mental health is the leading cause of disability. In 2010, this cost the economy $2.5 trillion in health costs and lost productivity, more than half of total global health spending. In high income countries, less than 30% of people with mental illness receive treatment, and this is 10% in low and middle-income countries.

Wysa started as a side project for healthcare AI start-up Touchkin, and soon acquired a life of its own. Ramakant Vempati, co-founder, shares, “Our technology passively detects behavioural health issues from smartphone sensors and engages them through chat.  In a trial with basic smartphones in semi-urban India, we could predict depression in people with diabetes to a 90% accuracy.  Excited, we followed up to see how this helped the patient. The findings were stunning: less than 3% of patients took support from a therapist in spite of their doctor’s recommendation, because of stigma and lack of access. Diagnosis of depression was not enough in itself- it felt like we were building fire alarms, when what we needed were fire extinguishers. However, sharing how they felt with a chatbot helped patients significantly and we saw depression symptoms reduce by 45% over 12 weeks. So, Wysa was born.”

Wysa collaborates with researchers across the world to validate its clinical efficacy. Dr Becky Inkster, Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge and Visiting Scholar, School of Social Work, Columbia University has been working with Wysa to bring it to disadvantaged groups that are hard to reach.  She said, “What sets this approach aside from other Big Data collection approaches is its ability to simultaneously guide clinical care while being driven by the needs and desires of the individual. One of the most stimulating challenges for integrating AI technology into mental health support and social psychiatry, as I see it, will be how to incorporate culture, preferences and empathy into the AI experience.”

Wysa supports a variety of behavioural health use cases including anxiety, smoking cessation, diabetes and disability support, to reduce healthcare costs and improve adherence. Vidushi Kamani, Venture Partner at Kae Capital and an investor in Wysa, said, “Combining passive sensing technology with a personalised AI coach changes the economics of the behavioural health and wellness industry globally. With Wysa, providers can increase the number of people supported per coach by 10-100X, with increased engagement, better monitoring and improved self-management.” Touchkin is taking Wysa to the insurance sector through its collaboration with Swiss Re, one of the leading reinsurance companies globally.

Wysa has been a part of Swiss Re’s Insurtech accelerator in 2016, Facebook’s global incubation program FbStart, and has won an innovation award from WASME and the MSME Ministry, Government of India.