GPS Renewables Partners with YourDOST for mHSE (Mental & Physical Health, Safety and Environment)

This initiative by GPS Renewables aims to go beyond HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) and focus on holistic mental and physical well-being of their staff via a new concept called mHSE (Mental & Physical Health, Safety and Environment)

In a one-of-its-kind initiative in the EPC Sector (Engineering, Procurement, Construction), GPS Renewables, a Bengaluru based biofuels technology and EPC firm, has partnered with YourDOST, to promote employee mental well-being and prioritise holistic health. As part of this effort, GPS employees will have access to unlimited counselling sessions as well as regular mental health awareness sessions at project sites.

GPS Renewables is a leading Bio-Energy company with specific focus on biofuels ranging from Biogas, BioCNG, Ethanol and Green Hydrogen. In line with their vision to become the world's leading Bioenergy project developer, GPS builds biofuel infrastructure at scale.

Through this partnership with YourDOST, GPS Renewables will undertake a number of mental well-being initiatives that include the following

Online sessions to highlight the importance of mHSE (Mental & Physical Health, Safety and Environment): Regular sessions will be conducted by YourDOST to sensitise staff on how mental well-being plays a huge role in the overall health of an individual.

Awareness programs at project sites: Sessions will be held with contractual labourers and other on-ground staff on the importance of seeking help and encouraging them to have open conversations around their mental health

• Unlimited counselling sessions: Detailed counselling sessions will be made available for all employees and their dependants.
• Employee Checkins: Regular employee engagement and checkins to ensure their emotional wellbeing at GPS
• Monthly activities: YourDOST will host monthly sessions revolving around building awareness about managing work-related stress and how it can impact mental and physical well-being.

Commenting on the initiative, Rukmani Kapoor, Chief of Staff, GPS Renewables, said, “ At GPS Renewables, we don't just focus on building a great business. We want to focus on building lives with the right mindset. We believe that conversations around mental health should not just be limited to people who work in tech companies or those that put in long hours in front of their laptops. In a typical EPC company today, the culture is generally characterised by complete focus on only work at hand, with no necessary employee engagement or initiatives that focus on the emotional health of an employee. This initiative is a step towards changing that narrative. Our aim is to go beyond just ensuring HSE (Health, Safety and Environment) and focus on mHSE (Mental & Physical Health, Safety and Environment).”

Commenting on the initiative, Ms. Richa Singh, CEO & Co-Founder, YourDOST, said, “We are thrilled to work with GPS Renewables and support them in their effort to promote mental wellness at the workplace. At YourDOST, we believe that mental health has a direct impact on an individual’s professional, personal, and financial domain. It’s important to take active steps to balance the four quadrants of life-Personal, Professional Life, Financial Independence, and Social Life. We hope that many more companies like GPS will come forward to actively promote mental well-being in sectors beyond technology.”

About GPS Renewables

GPS Renewables is a Series B funded cleantech company headquartered in Bangalore. The company focuses on biofuel technologies to solve the organic waste management challenge, accelerate substitution of fossil fuel with bioenergy and play a key role in mitigating climate change. Starting from captive biogas plants, GPS has scaled up to setup some of the world’s largest BioCNG plants, including Indore city’s recently commissioned 500TPD BioCNG plant.

YourDost Join Hands With WittyFeed For A Social Cause for World Suicide Prevention Day With A Simple Message – Suicide is #NotAnOption

YourDOST which is a emotional wellness coach, which provides an online platform for people with emotional and mental issues to speak with qualified professionals in an anonymous manner. The seeds for YourDOST were laid when co-founder Richa Singh tragically lost a hostel mate to suicide, at IIT Guwahati.

“One in 4 people in India suffer from some sort of mental ailment, and that is a huge number. Add the stigma attached to mental health in India and you have a recipe for disaster. The attitude towards mental health in India needs to change, and people need to know first that there are better options than suicide when faced with adversity,” says Richa Singh.

This campaign aims to reach users on Social Media. “The purpose of this campaign is threefold - firstly the message itself, which is to let people know that, suicide, is not an option. Second is to educate people about why suicides happen and how to nip suicidal thoughts in the bud. The third objective is to promote NGOs who provide suicide helplines for anyone who is or knows someone who’s having suicidal thoughts,” say co-founder Puneet Manuja.

WittyFeed, world’s 2nd largest viral content company has partnered with YourDost to be the digital partner of #StopSuicide campaign for World Suicide Prevention Day followed on 10th September. With this collective collaboration, WittyFeed will share the videos and other content captured during the campaign on their social media platforms, including Facebook. The core idea is to spread the simple message of Suicide #NotAnOption around the globe.

On the partnership Co-founder & CEO of Wittyfeed, Vinay Singhal said “We feel very privileged to be associated with such a noble campaign. Every life is precious, and I personally believe that giving up is not a solution, fight back very hurdles of life and come out with flying colors. I am very humbled that WittyFeed is standing for an amazing campaign which will create awareness among the masses and help in reducing the number of suicides."

According to WHO, suicide claims 800,000 lives every year - there is one suicide every 40 seconds. And for every suicide, there are five times more suicide attempts. The primary causes of suicide are depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Among adolescents and young adults, therapy and counseling have shown close to a 90% recovery rate. These statistics show us that more people know about this and reduce the number of lives that suicide claims every year.

SAIF Partners Invests $1M in Online Emotional Wellness & Counselling Platform YourDOST in Pre-series A Round

SAIF Partners, a leading venture capital firm with over $4B under management, has announced a pre-series A funding deal with YourDOST.  SAIF Partners has invested $1 million into the Bangalore-based venture which offers online counselling and emotional wellness support to users to bolster their mental health. YourDOST has raised a total of $1.2 million in the round with the repeat participation of seven angel investors- Venk Krishnan (NuVentures), Subba rao Telidevara (NuVentures), Phanindra Sama (Redbus), Aprameya (Taxi4Sure), Paula Mariwala (Seedfund), Vibhu Garg (Unicommerce), Gaurav Bhalotia (Flipkart). YourDOST will strategically allocate the funds raised to rope in senior professionals from the industry in key leadership positions, to expand the scope of its operations and to reach out to more people.

Dealing with societal pressure, compulsion to perform and excel at work, family and marital issues, stress of studies, constant lifestyle comparison with the peer group due to over exposure to social media and several other factors have led to severe disturbances in our emotional stability. While the stress is on a constant rise, discussing it openly or dealing with it medically remains a taboo in our country.

This huge need gap and Richa Singh’s personal experience of a friend losing her life at IIT due to placement pressure led to birth of YourDOST to provide people with convenient yet anonymous access to experts consisting of life coaches, psychologists and other experienced individuals. Through this online platform which is available as a free service both through web portal and mobile app, users can choose to get into a live chat, find answers over email or book an appointment with the expert of their choice. It has over 300 experts on its platforms who conduct roughly 800 one-on-one sessions every day. Approximately 4,00,000 people pan-India have already sought guidance and emotional counselling on YourDOST since it went live in 2014.

Mridul Arora, Principal, SAIF Partners, said, “We are impressed by the refreshing approach YourDOST team has adopted to address an increasingly relevant issue of emotional & mental wellbeing. While still in early stages, we believe YourDOST is at the forefront of creating a new space in India which has extremely strong latent demand. With it’s strong focus on quality supply and maintaining user anonymity, YourDOST presents a unique proposition for consumers to overcome the prevailing hesitation associated with openly talking about mental issues. With this investment SAIF continues to identify and nurture businesses, right from seed stage/pre-Series A to beyond ."

Commenting on the partnership with SAIF Partners, Richa Singh, CEO, YourDOST said, “We have spent the last 1.5 years strengthening our product, creating awareness and understanding the needs of users. The entire team is now excited to enter into the next level of our evolution with support from a valuable partner like SAIF which has believed in our work and has invested in us. With the experience of SAIF Partners backing us and the funds we have raised, we are ready to accelerate our growth, expand the team and operations and reach out to more and more people with their emotional wellness coach - YourDOST.”

Incepted in December 2014, YourDOST raised close to $400,000 in seed funding round from a group of well known angel investors. YourDOST was founded in December 2014 by IIT-Guwahati alumnus Richa Singh, along with IIM-Bangalore’s Puneet Manuja, Northeastern University alumnus Satyajeet Nandekar and Prakhar Verma, a computer science graduate from BMSCE, Bengaluru.

YourDOST – addressing the need gap:

Access and awareness towards mental and emotional wellbeing is very restricted in India and comes with several taboos associated with it. Here are some facts highlighting this challenge:

• According to government estimates, 1 in 5 people in India need counselling, either psychological or psychiatric


• For an estimated 70 million+ people living with psychosocial problems and disabilities, there are less than 50 government mental health establishments.


• According to a report by WHO in 2011, 1 out of 7 people in India i.e. 15% of Indian population was suffering from depression in 2015, this has seen an alarming rise with 20% of Indian population being depressed today.


• 50% of corporate India is suffering from chronic stress. In fact as per a survey by ASSOCHAM earlier this year, highlights that the rate of emotional problems such as anxiety and depression has increased by 45-50% among corporate employees in the last eight years.


• According to medical experts, 4 in 5 people suffering from severe mental ailment in India choose not to treat it which causes early death by at least 15-20 years as compared to mentally healthy people

YourDOST is one of its kind online emotional wellness platform to get support from experts consisting of life coaches, psychologists and other experienced individuals. It is available to people via its web platform and also on mobile through its recently launched mobile app on android platform and IOS platform. The startup allows instant access to users to a team of 300+ experts and share their problems through an online interface, be it a live chat or email query or even book one on one interaction with the expert of their choice. The key aspect of this venture is that people are kept completely anonymous throughout the platform.

YourDOST aims to reduce the stigma attached to seeking help for mental wellness in our country and with the use of technology wants to make expert help widely and instantly available to people looking for emotional and mental wellbeing.