Touchkin (Touchkin eServices Pvt. Ltd.) was founded in 2015 in Bangalore by Ramakant Vempati & Jo Aggarwal (also partners in life. Touchkin started out as an AI innovation in eldercare, for remote care. In January 2016, having raised their first angel round and launched their first product, it became clear to them that the market was not yet ready for the product. In the conflict between shutting down a just-funded startup or pursuing a product without market fit, Jo struggled with founder depression. Out of that depression was born the resolution to try to solve for mental health and the idea of Wysa was born.
Wysa, launched on World Mental Health Day in 2016, found immediate product market fit. There was significant media attention and it began to grow with word of mouth alone, being featured in books on AI in mental health and reaching over 100,000 users in the first year alone, growing to over 3 million users today, purely through organic growth.
Then in early 2018, Jo and Ramakant met Emma - a mental health nurse in the NHS who shared how Wysa was helping the adolescents she worked with in NELFT. And how important it was that it became clinically assured. She later became our clinical safety officer and led us to become the top clinically approved app by NHS.
In Feb 2018, Touchkin created it's first subsidiary Wysa Ltd in London. It began working with the NHS and won an Innovate UK grant and the first NIHR AI grant for mental health, through which it is working with three NHS sites and Imperial College to show how AI can improve patient outcomes, experience and reduce waitlists in the NHS IAPT (therapy) service.
Wysa was also one of the 11 global insuretech and health techcompanies selected by the Hartford accelerator to explore opening an office in the US and build connections with the insurance sector there. In Feb 2020, Touchkin's second subsidiary, Wysa Inc was established in the US as a Delaware Corp with initially a virtual address in Connecticut and today its own offices in Boston's Back Bay area.
2020 has been a year that has changed the world in many ways, and mental health was a big part of it. The need for digital behavioral health grew, and with it Wysa's business. Ministry of Health in Singapore adopted Wysa for its citizens and Aetna for its members. Accenture adopted Wysa across all of it's employees.
It was also the year Google Assistant Investment Fund and Boston-based W Health Ventures invested in Touchkin, to help grow its presence in the US and UK with a focus on bridging the missing middle of mental health.
Founders, Advisors and Investors
Co-Founder
Life Coach. Wysa Writer. TED Speaker. Won Global Telecom Business Innovation Award & Stevie Silver. ex- MD@Pearson Learning Solutions. IIT Delhi.
Ramakant Vempati
Founder
Leads Ex-COO at Goldman Sachs EMEA. Product and market strategy at Barclays Capital, Booz & Co. IIT Kanpur & London Business School.
Dr. Becky Inkster
Advisor
Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge.
Neuroscientist.
Visiting Scholar at School of Social Work, Columbia University. Founder, Hip Hop Psych and convener of Digital Interventions in Mental Health.
Dr. John Pestian
Advisor
Director, Computational Medicine Center, Cincinatti Children's Hostpital
Joint Faculty, Oakridge National Lab Research KAI
Board Director
EVP, WHeatlh Ventures. ex-Iora Health. co-founder The Breakfast Revolution. Wharton
Vidushi Kamani
Board Director
Venture Partner with Kae Capital (kae-capital.com), a sector-agnostic seed fund in Mumbai. Ex- Accenture. Director, Start Up!, as a Founding team - Varthana. MBA from XLRI.
Manish Singhal
Board Director
Founding Partner, pi Venures. co-founder, LetsVenture. ex-Sling Labs. AI & Deep Tech experitise.
IIT Kanpur
Amit Gupta
Angel, advisor
Co-founder, InMobi (Mobile ad platform, est value~$2.5B).
Business Head, International at InMobi. IIT Kanpur.
Anuj Srivastava
Angel, advisor
Co-founder & CEO, Livspace. Global Product Marketing, Google Local, Wallet. Venture Partner, Jungle Ventures. IIT Kanpur, London Business School.
James Abraham
Angel, advisor
Founder & Director, Solar Arise. Member, CII Renewable Energy Council. Senior Partner & MD India, BCG. Member, Aspen Leadership Network. John Hopkins, Wharton (Baker Scholar).
Team Wysa
Ashok
Director Partnerships
Smriti
Lead Psychologist
Harsh
Product Lead
Shubhankar
Engineering Lead
Diana
Design Lead
Jaswinder
Front end Lead
Ebin
iOS Lead
Aishwarya
Content Lead
Paul
Senior Backend Engineer
Megha
Product Manager
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