As a part of its pre-Series A round, YourDOST, an online emotional wellness and counselling platform has raised $1.2 million. Out of the $1.2 million, $1 million comes from SAIF Partners.
Apart from SAIF, seven existing angel investors have participated in this round, bringing total to $1.2 million. The angel investors include Venk Krishnan, Subba Rao, Telidevara, Phanindra Sama, Aprameya, Paula Mariwala, Vibhu Garg and Gaurav Bhalotia.
This newly infused funding will help the company to rope in senior professionals from the industry in key leadership positions. It also plans to expand the scope of its operations and to reach out to more people.
The company is planning to hire four members to their senior leadership. It further plans to add six associates to the mid-management team. The current team count stands at 22.
Earlier, the company had raised close to $400,000 in its seed funding round from a group of angel investors.
YourDost was founded in December 2014 by Richa Singh, Puneet Manuja, Satyajeet Nandekar and Prakhar Verma. It aims to create awareness and reduce the stigma associated with mental wellness in the society.
It anonymously connects individuals to experts, including psychologists, psychotherapists, counsellors, life coaches, career guides, who can understand and guide them. The sessions are completely confidential.
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, it also has a mobile application for the Android platform.
Through its platform, users can choose to get into a live chat, find answers over email or book an appointment with the expert of their choice. It has over 300 experts on its platforms who conduct roughly 800 one-on-one sessions every day.
Mridul Arora, Principal, SAIF Partners, said,
We are impressed by the refreshing approach YourDOST team has adopted to address an increasingly relevant issue of emotional & mental wellbeing. While still in early stages, we believe YourDOST is at the forefront of creating a new space in India which has extremely strong latent demand. With it’s strong focus on quality supply and maintaining user anonymity, YourDOST presents a unique proposition for consumers to overcome the prevailing hesitation associated with openly talking about mental issues. With this investment SAIF continues to identify and nurture businesses, right from seed stage/pre-Series A to beyond.
