YourDost, an online portal which provides counselling and psychological support, has raised $400,000 in seed funding from a group of angel investors. With the new cash infusion, the company will now start marketing efforts and will also use it to expand its business.
The investors, who invested in the company includes Phanindra Sama of redBus; Aprameya Radhakrishna of TaxiForSure; Aneesh Reddy – founder of Capillary Technologies; and Neeraj Jawalkar – founder of Smartur.
Along with them, Sanjay Anandaram, who is a partner at Seedfund; Pavan Ongole, former director at SoftBank; and nuVentures co-founder Venk Krishnan have also put their money in this seed funding round.
YourDost was founded in December 2014 by Richa Singh, Puneet Manuja, Satyajeet Nandekar and Prakhar Verma, with an aim to create awareness and reduce the stigma associated with mental wellness in the society.
It offers support to people looking to discuss any type of emotional issues by providing instant online access to experts with assured anonymity. Along with providing this service through its web portal, the company has also launched a mobile application for the Android platform, which is free to use.
The experts, with whom the company connects the users, are life coaches, psychologists and even entrepreneurs and engineers offering career guidance, etc. Users have three options to get in touch with the expert – via live chat, over email or an appointment with the expert.
While the company does not have a revenue model yet, it is planning to introduce premium offers such as one-on-one meetings, special appointments with select experts, etc., for a fee, once it gets enough traction.
Its been 10 months since the company started operations and its claims to have 70,000 users logging in, with the number growing 40 per cent month-on-month. It also claims that it has a team of over 75 experts, who facilitate around 300 one-on-one interactions on a daily basis.
Richa Singh, Co-Founder & CEO, YourDOST.com, said,
We are confident that technology combined with empathy and right kind of experts will go a long way in helping people going through a various emotional and mental challenges and equipping them to better deal with it.
