Google-backed mental health app Wysa raises $20 million to expand in US and UK

• Wysa has raised $20 million in Series B financing to expand its presence in India and international markets.
• It relies on AI-powered bot to help clients manage their anxiety, sleep, or if they need to talk to a therapist.
• The seven-year-old start-up will also hire staff in various business divisions to expand its business.

Google-assisted artificial intelligence (AI) powered mental health app Wysa has raised $20 million to expand its presence in India and international markets such as the US and UK, company co-founder Ramakant Vempati told https://cafe-madrid.com/.

The Series B funding round was led by HealthQuad, the company said Thursday. British International Investment (BII) also participated in this round, along with existing investors google Assistant Investments, W Health Ventures, Kae Capital and pi Ventures. Google Assistant Investments is Google’s investment program for start-ups.

Founded in 2015 by Vempati and Jo Aggarwal, Wysa relies on AI-powered bot to help clients manage their anxiety, sleep, or if they need to talk to a therapist. It also provides evidence-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) exercises within the app.

The company largely provides a business solution to clients such as Accenture Global, Aetna International, National Health Service (NHS) of England, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the Ministry of Health in Singapore. In addition, it also has a freemium model for individual customers.

Expansion and Hiring Plans

The seven-year-old start-up will also hire staff in various business divisions to expand its business. Vempati stressed that AI has enabled Wysa to serve 4.5 million people in 65 countries with a team of just 100 people, and that it can bring kind of “amplification” technology.

“It helps address the supply-demand gap, which currently exists and will get much, much worse. And with things like Wysa (it’s) available at 3 a.m. if you want it and it can support millions and millions of people around the world,” Vempati noted, adding that India only has 10,000 therapists.

He noted that Wysa is not a replacement for therapy, but rather an early stage support that can enhance therapy. It now wants to expand into more clinical use cases for patients with chronic pain and disease. “Those are the three broad (use cases) — business development, clinical work, and product,” he added.

Speech-based assistance is next

Wysa is also exploring options for integrating its technology into voice-based communications using Amazon and Google Assistant. Notably, Wysa is one of Google Assistant’s first investments in Asia and was also part of Google Launchpad Accelerator India in 2018. It was also part of AWS Healthcare Accelerator launched earlier this year.

“We already have a deep partnership with Google. Google has been a huge help to us, not just in terms of funding. We were also part of the Amazon Accelerator and one of the things we’re exploring with people like Amazon is that they have tremendous interaction and movement to voice,” said Vempati, stressing that there were many challenges that needed to be addressed before we could move forward. to the voice assisted direction.

“All of this is at an early stage, so I can’t say for sure,” he said.

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