Mental Health App Wysa Gets $5.5 Million In Series A Funding

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The third part, he said, is what the company calls clinical programs. Nevertheless, Vempati said that the signalling coming through the Breakthrough Device Designation has opened “lots of commercialization pathways” that the company is exploring at this moment. The company wants to use the fresh investment to build new partnerships, improve and enhance the product, and go beyond English and introduce new languages, Vempati mentioned. Originally built to work in English, Wysa will use some of the investment also to widen multilingual support. In simpler words, smartphone users can access Wysa as a mental health app under a freemium model, while employers including Accenture, Colgate-Palmolive, Aetna International and Swiss Re are offering its support through their existing employee benefits including Employee Assistance Programs (EAP).Healthcare providers including the UK’s NHS as well as authorities including the Ministry of Health in Singapore, on the other hand, are also using Wysa as a solution for a large number of the public in their countries.Vempati told TechCrunch that about 80 percent of Wysa’s business comes from enterprise customers.“Enterprise and B2B will become increasingly more important going forward for both commercial growth as well as impact,” he said, adding that the B2C model has historically driven a majority of Wysa’s market impact.“The needs for Wysa are present all across, from high income to low-income countries,” said Charles Antoine-Janssen, chief investment officer, HealthQuad, in a statement. “Mental health triaging of patients using AI which is fast, effective and non-stigmatising for patients living in unaccepting societies answers a huge need in India, the rest of low income Asia, Africa as well as the wealthiest countries of the world.”Wysa also has development a wellness component: it guides users through cognitive-behavioral techniques (CBT) alongside regular meditation, breathing and mindfulness exercises and micro-actions to help address their mental health problems.“We did a lot of clinical trials and created some very strong outcomes on patients or people who have chronic pain and are struggling,” he said. In May, Wysa received the Breakthrough Device Designation from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Google’s backing is also helping Wysa explore voice-based experiences.