(1) Describe your startup.
We make effective mental support accessible for everyone.
We do that by offering a burnout and fallout prevention program to companies. With a confidential 5-minute well being scan per employee you can see what % of employees are at risk for burnout. We connect them with a certified human coach via chat, anytime anywhere.
(2) What inspired the creation of the startup?
I had my own mental breakdown 6 years ago. I tried coaching, yoga and meditation and only got professional therapy when it was too late. I then ran into my co-founder, psychiatrist prof. Chibanda who was 1 in 12 therapists in Zimbabwe and trained ordinary people to give access to therapy for everyone. He just finished a clinical trial that showed this was even effective to treat depression. We met and the thought was: hey, why don’t we make this accessible for everyone via a digital platform?
(3) What differentiates your startup from the competition?
We train ordinary people who otherwise would not work or work less to be able to become a coach with our proven methodology. This way we can make the coaching very affordable ($35 a session) while you get expert support that is shown to work.
(4) Who is the target market?
Medium to large companies.
The coaching method works well both for academically and practically educated people so any kind of employees with any kind of problems our coaches can handle.
(5) How did you grow your presence in your target market?
Did a couple of pilots with well-known companies (Philips, Merkle, Royal institute of the Tropics, 2 known startups in the Netherlands and showed the results to others.
(6) What stage are you at?
Seed. We’re still adjusting our business model and internal processes, but expect we’re ready for scale within the next 6 months.
(7) What are some of the biggest challenges that your startup have had to overcome?
Who to sell the service to and how to position it. We basically created a new job, the Inuka coach. Its not easy.
(8) What is next for the startup?
Start our first large (>200) employees rollout!
(9) Where would you like to be in the next 5 years?
The biggest coaching company in the world.
(10) How do you build resilience into your startup during this COVID-19 pandemic?
We have done three things:
(1) Trained all coaches by our co-founder Prof. Chibanda on WHO facts and mental health guidelines around COVID-19
(2) Opened up our coaches also to the general audiences in Europe and the USA via www.inuka.io/covid19 (before we only offered via companies)
(3) Reframed our offer for companies within the COVID-19 context
(11) If you had to give one piece of advice to an up and coming startup what would it be?
Do the things you enjoy, so you can stomach the many things you don’t enjoy but still have to do 🙂
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