Founded by Krishna Veer Singh and Tarun Gupta, LISSUN aims to make mental health a less challenging factor in society.
When was LISSUN founded & What is the product/service provided?
LISSUN was founded in August 2021 to address the rising challenge of mental health in society.
In India, people have limited understanding and knowledge of issues of mental wellness or illness. Even after so many years, there is still stigma and fear of judgment in their minds.
It is difficult for people to find the right kind of specialist who can address their mental and emotional issues and provide them personalized and specialized support.
Our app is free to download and provides many self-help tools, tests, and programmes that anyone can avail free of cost for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes.
If the severity of the problem is high, LISSUN connects them with certified professional therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists.
What is the company’s long and short-term vision? Where do you see your industry going in the next five years?
We have set clear short- and long-term goals for the brand. In the short term we would like to expand our network of doctors and therapists on our platform, and make mental health consultation and treatment as normal as any other doctor’s consultation.
We have always registered a notable presence online. Additionally, we are working on developing our iOS app, and have also gone ‘phygital’ with the launch of our first offline center in Muzaffarnagar, U.P. Phygital approach gives people an experience of what to expect from us digitally as they proceed in their wellness journeys.
In the future, we aim at penetrating deeper into tier 2 and tier 3, where there are very few certified clinical psychologists/counselors per lakh population. We want to make LISSUN a household name in the next 5 years!
How did you get inspiration for the company? How did you go about researching and validating the idea?
Tarun and I had experienced mental health challenges at some point in time.
Later, when the pandemic hit, we witnessed a rise in cases related to mental health. Our research showed that people were struggling to find the right help and come forward to talk about it.
Therefore, we established LISSUN to fill the gap and enable mental and emotional wellness in society. We brainstormed with certified therapists and medical professionals before finalising the model. Need to ‘keep it discreet’, and remote accessibility were the first two requirements to pop up.
We understood that we had to make sure our platform provided that kind of service to the people.
Since August 2021, we have helped thousands of individuals and their families live better and more fulfilling life.
How does the product work & What problems does it solve?
LISSUN is an end-to-end platform to solve mental and emotional health issues.
One may simply open the app or website, chat with a virtual friend E.Mo, who would help them identify and even diagnose their problem/issue using specialized tests, content, audio-visual tools, and programmes made by mental health professionals.
If needed, the app connects the users to experts. The process is simple and quick. One can select from the mentioned list of counsellors, clinical psychologists, or psychiatrists, and book a session at any time for a nominal fee.
Phone support and offline clinic facilities are also provided.
What are your USP and innovation? How are you different from others?
Brand’s USP lies in its approach to addressing ‘mental unawareness’ in society.
We do not just help people who already have an identified mental health challenge, but also cater to those who may have it and are unaware of it right now, or are prone to developing it in the future.
Our artificial intelligence and machine learning powered tools help us do that. Different solutions are provided (both free and paid) based on their situation.
Apart from this, we understand the phenomenon wherein people who are struggling with critical treatment (cancer, dialysis, IVF, etc.) tend to suffer from stress, and depression, but are unaware of this. We also give specialized counseling to them too.
What are some of your competitors & what advantage do you have over them? & Briefly explain your revenue model?
LISSUN is one of its kind product and end-to-end mental health service provider. We work by integrating mental health into larger healthcare or places where clients can benefit from mental and emotional wellness support.
We currently charge for therapies/counseling done by practitioners of LISSUN. In the future, we are planning to introduce group bookings, and launch a subscription of the product.
What difficulties did you encounter when you started the company & were you impacted by the Covid outbreak?
The onset of covid has made us understand how important it is to focus on mental health. Statistics reveal that almost 20% of Indians are suffering from some or other kind of mental health issue since the start of the pandemic.
Covid has simply made us see how bad and neglected the situation was before, and the urgency required to address this issue.
We started further to the COVID outbreak, and the whole purpose was to resolve the rising issue of mental illness that was aggravated by COVID.
What are your future plans & launches?
The brand is aggressively working towards reaching a wider audience and making mental health solutions accessible to people. To achieve this, we have adopted a phygital model, starting with tier 2 city Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, and will look forward to widening the offline presence, majorly in tier 2 and tier 3.
Current company size, work culture.
By the 2022 fiscal end, we aim at becoming a team of 50-60 hardworking, ambitious, and dedicated individuals. We are a fast-paced organization, enabling our employees to experiment and innovate the delivery of mental health awareness.
A piece of advice for the readers.
From an entrepreneur’s perspective, the early days demand more than what the following period would. In the initial stage when you are struggling to even establish your existence, you need people who would stick with you and help you build the idea.
During this period you must always look out for those who share the same energy as you and believe in the vision and concept. Usually, when you build a team, you would go by the experience, but when it is about the ‘firsts’ make it a point to go by the synergies.