Being a self-therapy application is personal.
Varun Gandhi is the co-founder and CEO of application Being.
Varun aims to build a world in which each of us can have access to a private therapist every time.
The cornerstone of this lies in Varun is a personal struggle with mental health.
A passionate cricket, chartered accountants, and professional self-taught design, Varun wear a hat entrepreneurship early in life.
After receiving limited success with two startups, he turned to therapy to help him with the mental health during these challenging times.
Through Being, he aims to help the 1 billion to their mental health needs globally, in 2030, through the power of personal self-therapy.
How does it feel to feature in the Google Play Best of 2021 list in India? It was an incredible feeling to see our application is displayed in the list.
Although it has been a fascinating journey, we are in a situation which is quite difficult in the beginning, to the point that we almost ran out of funds.
We can not employ engineers or psychologists.
But we keep.
Over time, increasing numbers of our engagement, ranking touched almost 5, and positive reviews poured in.
Google Play see our work and help us improve our engagement numbers.
We went from 500 new users per week for 500 new users during breakfast.
All of it is organic, thanks to Google Play.
Finally, investors are seeing, and we closed our seed round in less than 10 days.
What do you think is the USP of the application that have helped you get here? We made a very contextual mental health and problem-driven.
We think like a user.
One of the most common feedback we receive from our users is that this feels so relatable – as if it was made especially for me.
My co-founder, Abhishek and I have caused a large amount of time dealing with mental health problems.
We have been there ourselves and know how it feels.
Most importantly, we know that no two the same anxiety.
Each individual will have different problems that they may face, and therefore, need to be addressed in a customized manner.
It’s our core belief and a differentiator in Being.
How things have changed pandemic for you, what has been the biggest learning in 2021? The pandemic has certainly given a boost to applications and mental health services.
Mental health has never been more talked about, ever.
Typically, taboo, today every household was to discuss mental health, either through recognition or even rejection.
In March 2021, we spun our offering of spiritual wisdom to mental health services more personalized.
As part of this, we have been working on key aspects such as anxiety and stress, relationships, focus and productivity, and more.
And we have seen great success.
We have added about 60K users in the last 6 months and have seen an amazing growth rate weekly in the Play Store.
All this through zero cost marketing.
We see great diversity in our user base.
While 50% of our users Gen-Z or women, 40% of our users currently residing outside India, particularly the United States.
The lesson we have that all the 8 billion of us around the world need help.
Problems can vary.
The intensity can be varied.
This type of assistance that we need can vary.
But we need help.
what plans you have for applications for next year? Mental health is one of the most complex problems of the modern world.
This is a problem that will always be around, and we need to do anything to find a solution apt.
Our mission is to help one billion people by the year 2030.
And 2022 is an important year for us.
From the product point of view, we want to lay a solid foundation for: Build the most diverse (and possibly greatest) network of mental health professionals around the world; designing ‘most human’ mini-therapy experience; and lastly, the most private craft (and nonlinear) A to B on the way mental health for each user.
We wanted to dig a little deeper into markets such as the United States and Canada, run a few experiments early in the G7, to reach our first million users mark, and succeeded in increasing Series A funding in the second half of 2022 to improve further.
any message you have for your app users? We just want to say that with Being, you will not find an app that tells, but a friend who helped.
The best Android application in 2021, becomes: aims to give everyone access to a private therapist, at any time
