This couple's AI chatbot helps people overcome mental health problems

An anthropomorphised baby penguin uses evidence-based cognitive behavioural techniques, meditation, breathing and motivational interviewing to help the user build emotional resilience

In 2009, Jo Agarwal and her husband Ramakant Vempati decided to leave their high-paying corporate jobs at Pearson Group and Goldman Sachs, respectively, in London to venture into entrepreneurship.

The duo joined the founding team of Silatech, a United Nations-backed non-profit organisation that leveraged technological innovations to train youth on web and mobile-based technologies and provide employment opportunities in war-torn, conflict zones such as Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Six years into Silatech, both Vempati and Agarwal wanted to return to India to support their ageing parents back home. However, their entry into working on the mental health arena got triggered due to incidents that happened on a personal front when one of their parents had mental health issues. Agarwal herself went into depression a few months after returning to India.

"It really became personal. But what we realised was mental health care was fragmented in India and most often lacked quality. Societal taboo was, and remains, the biggest hurdle," said Vempati. That is the starting point for Wysa.

According to a United Nations report, depression affects 264 million people in the world, while around half of all mental health conditions start by age 14. There is one suicide every 40 seconds and 75 per cent of the cases occur in mid and low-income countries.

Wysa is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot, anthropomorphised in the form of a baby penguin. It uses evidence-based cognitive behavioural techniques (CBT), meditation, breathing and motivational interviewing to help the user build emotional resilience skills, and thus aids in self-help.

The AI is built putting in place stringent clinical protocols and the responses are contributed by clinical psychologists. "This is to ensure that the responses given by Wysa are clinically safe," Vempati said. Depression symptoms could be detected with 90 per cent accuracy. The free chatbot, however, can be best used as a self-help tool and not a crisis support. The chatbot also auto escalates the issue to local helpline numbers to address emergencies.

The Bengaluru-based start-up claims it does not collect any personally identifiable user data. The chatbot requires zero human intervention which is one of the factors that are helping it to drive traffic to the app. "There is no email registration or a one-time password (OTP) verification process. Globally, there is a stigma attached to mental health and people want to talk to someone without disclosing who they really are," he added.

The company today has around 2.1 million installs across 60 countries globally. It has had over 100 million conversations till date. It claims to have achieved one million 'breakthroughs' or betterment of the emotional state of users. Wysa also has an option where users can get in touch with a human therapist for a fee of Rs 750 per session.

During the lockdown period of April to June, the app's new signups more than doubled when compared to the corresponding period last year, triggered by Covid-19 pandemic. Presently, it is adding around 3,500-4,000 installs daily.

The seed-funded startup was also one of the four Indian startups that won the Accenture Ventures Challenge last week, which aims at identifying the best technology startups. This year’s challenge focused on recognising startups that address the business and human impact of Covid-19, driving innovation in the ’never normal’ era.

While business to consumer (B2C) remains Wysa's mainstream user base, the company has also tied up with around 12 corporate brands, insurance firms and hospitals to offer customised solutions since foraying into the business to business (B2B) space last year. Last week, Wysa along with the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital rolled out a special app in the US that offers nine exercises for coping with Covid-related anxiety. In May, it joined hands with US-based insurance firm Aetna to address the mental health needs of its customers.

Going forward, Vempati wants to release the app in different vernacular languages so that the benefits are not only restricted just to the English-speaking audience. Also, the team is already testing a voice-based product that could be integrated with AI-assistants like Google Assistant, Apple's Siri or Amazon's Alexa.