UnHerd with Mohit Bhatnagar: Catalysing change through capital, connections and collectives

Hosted by ACT, UnHerd brings you the unheard stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt the social impact landscape. From social entrepreneurs to venture philanthropists, dive into real-world conversations on what they’ve experienced and learned about changing the status quo.

Our seventh episode welcomes Mohit Bhatnagar (MD, Peak XV and Board Member, ACT) who, in conversation with Aakanksha Gulati (CEO, ACT), shares his learnings on what it takes to catalyse social change through collective action and his insights on the importance of founders building for Bharat.

Listen to this episode on our Spotify channel or watch the conversation on YouTube.

Aakanksha: Hello folks and welcome to the seventh episode of UnHerd, a podcast hosted by ACT that delves into the extraordinary stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt India’s social impact landscape. 

Our guest today is a pioneer in the Indian venture capital space. He’s a Managing Director at PeakXV, formerly known as Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia – one of the largest venture capital firms globally.

Mohit has helped catalyse some incredible founders and has led investments in companies that you might have heard of – like Zomato, Freshworks, OYO, Meesho, and Cars24 amongst many others. He started out as an engineer at Ericsson, soon after which he co-founded a mobile startup called Brightpod. He then returned to India from the U.S. to join Bharti Airtel in 2002, helping scale it to the first 100 million users.

Armed with sharp insight on how the internet and technology could disrupt India in the coming decades, and with a deep desire to be part of India’s growing entrepreneurial energy, Mohit transitioned into the venture capital space where he’s played a significant role in leading India’s journey towards becoming a global startup hub. How I know Mohit, however, is as a philanthropist with a big and bold vision – a vision somewhat different from what we’ve seen in the philanthropic space in India over the last many decades and we’d love to deep dive into that more today. 

Welcome to UnHerd, Mohit!

Mohit: Thanks, Aakanksha! You’ve done me proud with that introduction.

Aakanksha: I think that was just a short version of everything you’ve done over the years! But getting right to it, Mohit, I’ve heard you describe yourself as an accidental VC, but as someone who’s looking from the outside, even when I connect the dots backwards – to me, your professional journey makes a lot of sense. A young engineer and failed startup founder with immense learning. Then a professional who led an internet mobile juggernaut’s growth in its early years. So it’s no surprise that you were able to channel all that knowledge into leading India’s tech startup boom from the forefront. But connect the dots for us a bit on your philanthropic journey. How did your interest in social impact come about? Were the seeds planted in your early years or was this a gradual evolution?  

The Spark That Lit The Fire: Catalysing a bias for ACTion, the startup way 

Mohit: So Aakanksha, I became a VC all the way back in 2006 and one of my early investments was in Ujjivan Microfinance, and it allowed me to see how you could create a very successful commercial public small bank while also alleviating poverty. I saw the double bottom line impact that, in this case, venture capital could provide – where you were basically not just creating a very well run, profitable enterprise, but you also did good for the communities that nurtured that company. I saw that same trend play out when Zomato gave birth to Feeding India and to Robin Hood Army, where it was all about creating a business around food, but it also meant you could actually feed the hungry and the not-so-privileged. At Freshworks, creating programs that allowed Computer Engineering and Science to be offered to folks who did not have access to it, to helping women come back to work after a break. So I just found all these different entrepreneurs who were building very exciting businesses, but while they were doing that, they had somehow found this ability to actually nurture and give back to the community; to the communities that were sort of giving birth to them.

Mohit: I think it is firmly established for me that founders are very unique human beings. They have this uncanny ability to go long, to be relentless in their pursuit of trying to achieve something that creates a large company, but also solves a really hard-to-solve problem. And so, if they can build these massively successful companies, they can definitely also lay the foundations for a better world. And I think that’s where it all began to come together.

Aakanksha: Let’s get a little bit more personal, Mohit, because I think as you started noticing this in your professional journey, I know you also started dabbling as a donor, you were starting to sit on some not-for-profit boards. And in particular, I know there’s a plan that was made on the back of a napkin with Ashish Dhawan. So share a bit more about that? How did all of this culminate into you saying, hey, actually, I’m someone who also wants to become a philanthropist?

Mohit: Given that I was convinced that founders can create massive change, I started writing grant checks in an individual capacity to some small businesses. I remember this one particular founder who came to me looking for a consulting gig. He had unfortunately gone blind during the course of a very successful career. And I told him, instead of giving you a consulting gig which will get over in six months, why don’t you actually create a company that can actually help blind people navigate their mobile phones more efficiently because you seem to be doing it quite well. You just arrived for this meeting with an Uber!  

And so, Pramit created this software application called Louie that actually helps blind folks voice navigate multiple mobile phone screens. And I was going about this journey enjoying these kinds of creations, till I realised that they all suffer from the same common set of problems. They need their next round of capital, they need to hire world-class talent, especially on the engineering side, to build really world-class products. They need networks that can actually help them scale and get promoted across various state governments or various private enterprises. And it was with that thought that I sat down with Ashish (Dhawan) because he had obviously lived a private equity journey and had now started Ashoka and was giving back at scale.

And I think that’s the napkin you’re referring to, where we actually used the placemat at Amour Cafe at Malcha Marg to actually draw out a little bit of a picture that shows how we can have these different verticals around Health, Education and Environment where we can create a platform that allows them (founders) to get easier access to funding, easier access to people and easier access to government, when it makes sense. And I think that was the birth of the idea, at least in my head.

Aakanksha: So it seems like all of this was brewing, it was culminating into something that was drawn, and then COVID happened. And I think that’s when we saw a lot of this coming together in a big way Mohit, because ACT raised almost 600 crores during that time and deployed it to create great impact. I have always felt that it really brought your philanthropic aspirations and mission and vision to life in a big way. So share a little bit from that time? What did you learn about philanthropy, about impact in ACT’s first avatar, and maybe also, what did you learn about yourself?

Mohit: Yeah, it was a crazy time. I think COVID was the closest I’ve seen to war. As things were just failing all around us, each one of us looked inward, made sure our families were safe, made sure our firms, our companies, and our employees were safe. But it was at such a scale that I think it shook us all from inside. I remember a bunch of us investors and founders – Abhiraj (Bhal) from Urban Company, Mekin (Maheshwari), Prashanth (Prakash) and Shekhar (Kirani) from Accel, GV (Ravishankar) from Sequoia. We all got together and we were like, we’ve got to do something here. And I think what resulted was a very special period where literally on a daily basis, we were spending close to 10 to 12 hours reviewing ideas that could actually put a dent into this massive challenge that India was facing.

To pick one, I remember oxygen being by far the single biggest challenge – as to how we basically get all forms of oxygen into India and Indian hospitals quickly. And we had a group that was basically overnight learning all about PSAs or these oxygen plants. We put 106 of these machines, using startup ecosystem infrastructure. And we got them put into the smallest hospitals in the widest, most far-out states of India. We had to lift close to 30,000 plus oxygen concentrators from places like China and others. And we used the logistics infrastructure of the startup world, think Delhivery, think Flipkart, and imported these machines and then were able to distribute them. We used the balance sheets temporarily of many of our startup ecosystem players like Zomato and others to actually help place the orders for many of these oxygen tanks. So my single biggest learning was how everybody came together.

Mohit: But the reason it was working was just shared trust in the collective – that we were trying to do this in a much more purposeful way for the country. So the single biggest learning is doing this in a collective way is way better than trying to do this individually. 

Aakanksha: I remember I was watching it from the outside during that time. And I remember the word that kept coming in my mind was…it just felt magical. And you use the word ‘collective’, and I know many people since have spoken about how ACT was one of those really great examples of collective philanthropy and collective action. And I think for me, a few things that really stood out during that time was one, there was no full-time team. At the peak, there were 400 or 500 volunteers, and yet work streams were forming, great outcomes were being delivered, people were really creating their own seat at the table, building conviction about what was the need of the hour – they had a high bias for action, were using data and experts, and leveraging the ecosystem across the private, social and public sectors to really bring it all to life. But transitioning from that, what would be interesting is to share about how that evolved into ACT in its current avatar and how we describe ACT today is that we call ourselves a tech first venture philanthropy platform for social change in India. But embedded in that are at least three ideas, if not more. The first, around tech first solutions for social change. The second is around venture-like grant making. And the third, which you’ve spoken a little bit about already is this platform approach. So share a little bit about how that kind of evolution happened? What were the underlying insights and what really gave you hope that this would really be the next chapter that would be worthwhile?

Mohit: Like I said, COVID was a little bit of a wartime scenario. And when we all reflected as it was coming to an end, I think we all realised that we had all gained more than we had given. It was very fulfilling for a lot of us involved that we were able to think beyond our own personal needs and come together to do something a little larger and more purposeful. And so, there was this strong thought that we have to sort of keep the platform going because we don’t know when the next crisis is going to come, and we certainly feel like we can create impact, so this is something worth doing. 

There were two big challenges. First is, everyone made time for fighting COVID and then everybody went back to their day jobs. And so from 350 volunteers who were fighting COVID along with us on the ACT platform, we had to now quickly transform to a full-time team. And I think that’s one of the biggest wins that we’ve done collectively here with your help and your leadership, is to actually build a solid, high-quality team. 

The second thing I realised is health consumed us all during COVID, but a lot of folks in the startup ecosystem cared about other causes. Things like education, environment, equal rights for women were equally important causes for many folks in our ecosystem. And since this had to be a collective and a platform, it was important that it stood for the three or four largest purposes that folks cared about. So we broadened it from just Health to include Education, Environment, and Women as three new verticals. Each one of them having their own dedicated teams, each one of them having their own IC where ideas are brought up to the IC and grants are given. 

[It is] super important that we include people who know the most about the problem before we try and attempt to solve it with the tech-first approach. So If you look at our three ICs, we have an Education IC, an Environment IC, and a Health IC. On the ACT For Health IC, we have people like Nachiket (Mor), who actually spent decades thinking about how public health can be envisioned for India. People like Dr. Ajay (Nair) from Swasth, Sandeep (Singhal), who’s a venture capitalist. Similarly in ACT For Environment, we’ve got GV (Ravishankar) and Prashanth (Prakash), who try and filter through ideas to see where most change can happen. On ACT For Education, we work together with Ashish Dhawan, who has spent time at Central Square Foundation, creating a beautiful institution there. Mekin (Maheshwari), who’s ex Flipkart, but now spends all his time helping education through government initiatives. I think bringing in these cross-functional experts is one way that this platform comes alive for me. 

The second thing is solving common sets of challenges. It’s easy to say we should be tech-first. It’s really hard for us to expect our grantees to hire and access world-class tech talent. So if you see that as a common need, you can create a platform like Tech Advisors, where we go out to the startup ecosystem and say, we don’t need your money, we just need your time. If you’re a programmer and care about social causes, can you spend some time with our startups and actually help them create the right technology architectures? For example, how needle moving would it be for a grantee at ACT to get a 12 week access to a UI/ UX expert from Urban Company or an ex Google Engineer that actually spends a 12 weeks sprint with them and gets that thinking and process correct. 

And when you’re starting something as wide as gender parity, you need to come from a place of actually seeing what the current data is. And we can talk about this till we go blue in the face, but I love the team’s approach of saying, let’s make gender parity first come alive in our own startup ecosystem. And to that extent the WISER report – that has 200 startups participating and has McKinsey putting together the structure and then working with people like Udaiti to put together an annual research – is highly thoughtful and insightful around the current state of affairs. 

I think at this point now we have close to 40 grants given across these different verticals post-COVID. And close to 15-20% of them have got follow-on funding, which by the way, just to digress, is exactly the venture model. 

The venture capital model is that of the power law. Out of all the investments we make, close to 10% or 15 % of investments are the ones that really drive the mega returns of the fund. And I think that’s the new thinking that I hope ACT can bring to the world of venture philanthropy. I think what we want to try and catalyse here is moonshot ideas to solve really hard-to-solve problems that haven’t got solved. And it’s completely okay for 15% or 20% of the ideas that we give initial grants to be the ones that scale. Because these are hard problems and not every idea that we apply to it will work. And so this ability to think that risk is good, not everything has to work and it’s okay to fail so that you can come back stronger on your second idea and we collectively learn is the venture philanthropy model that I think we really want to try and underscore.

Traversing Tough Roads: Balancing risk and impact

Aakanksha: I want to double click on one thing you said Mohit, because this used to come up a lot in our early days, less so now. But you know, a lot of people would ask us that this is philanthropic capital. And some of the solutions are not going to make it, which has happened by the way. There are some incredible solutions that we backed, who unfortunately were not able to figure out a sustainable business model that worked for the Bharat audience, which we are very, very centred on. And so, that’s one of the things that comes up – how do you make peace with the fact that this is supposed to be money for impact, but you’re saying that we need to have a risk appetite. Would love to hear your take on that.

Mohit: Look, at the end of it, you’re solving for impact. Everything else is mere conversation to get that impact. I don’t think we benefit the world or India by becoming the 101st foundation that does it the same way. What we’re attempting to do is an experiment called venture philanthropy with this new approach of risk taking and moon shots. It may or may not work in itself, but we are willing to give it a go. And I think the answer is, as long as we hold the bar high on impact. So for example, let’s take a company like Rocket Learning that we’ve partnered with. When we first started with them, close to a third of their annual budget came from ACT. But today, less than 10% of their annual budget comes from ACT. So it’s an example of how we can catalyse others to start giving and participating in growing some of these social unicorns.

Rocket Learning has over 3 Mn learners across 10 states of India. They have finished an RCT with J-PAL that suggests quite carefully that anyone who goes through a Rocket Learning course is better prepared to succeed in school. Parents are changing behaviours to actually spending more time with their children to make them successful in school. I think it really doesn’t matter whether there are two other Rocket Learnings that did not work in order for Rocket Learning to work. It’s more important that the 3 Mn learners and that Rocket Learning scales to 30 Mn. 

Aakanksha: Very, very well put. So building on the Rocket point Mohit, what do you feel actually has been the most exciting part of the last three years given our current model of venture philanthropy? It has been a short span of time obviously, and like you keep reminding all of us, this is not a time to declare victory at all, far from it. But share a bit on what’s been exciting and fueling that energy for you?

First Principle Lens: Developing successful models of change for Bharat

Mohit: Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that nothing’s really done yet. It’s 1% done, if that, and we’ve got miles to go. I would say there are three things that are beginning to give me at least confidence that we’re on the right track. The first one is it’s hard to be a founder in the social impact sector. It’s super hard. It’s a frustratingly long time to be able to see the impact that you’re trying to see. It’s super hard to access capital for you to actually attract the best talent and then go long. It’s super hard to work with many other constituents and partners who actually ask more questions and ask for precise answers way before you’ve actually discovered what the answers can be.  

I think that, when we create a Rocket Learning, where someone like Azeez (Gupta) who graduated from Harvard and had so many other options in life that he could spend his career on, decides to become a social entrepreneur. Someone like ACT, along with the ecosystem, supports him. He then becomes a role model. He, Utsav (Kheria), the entire team, then become role models for the next set of founders who have a choice to either go into the for-profit commercial world or actually go in the social impact world. So I think we’ve helped create a few role models. I look at Karya, look at Rocket Learning, I look at many of our other founders. They’re beginning to demonstrate some of the characteristics and skills that inspire the next gen.

I think the second thing we’ve done is, outside the individual company, we’re beginning to establish a few new business models. For example, Karya uses this concept of, we’ll pay you well for the work you do. They actually use rural Indian women to help perfect the models, the AI models being created by the Valley companies. And you can ask anybody to upskill. Sometimes the benefit of upskilling and paying for that upskilling is not so obvious to the person, but not only are these women now earning, they’re actually gaining their confidence and now they’re going to be upskilling themselves because they want better lives for themselves and their families. So I think these are new business models that we will try and put into place, which again should help provide new frameworks for the next gen. 

And finally, capital is scarce in social impact, and I think when we provide this initial seed capital from ACT, it allows business models to get created. It allows companies to move the ball forward. Cloud Physician is one of these companies that ACT had partnered with during COVID time, when it was so hard to go face-to-face for medical reasons. Cloud Physician’s remote management of ICUs was a critical reason that ACT gave them a grant. Well, that business model has scaled and today is very relevant because now Cloud Physician now services over 200 hospitals across India in a for-profit manner and they have attracted venture capital funding for their next round. So giving rise to new business models that then catalyse further rounds of funding would be the third thing. So role models, new business models, and catalytic funding would be the three things I think that make me feel we’re on the right track.

Aakanksha: Love it. And so the flip side of that coin, what do you feel have been the biggest challenges or, even in the coming time, roadblocks that we might face? And I’ll share some candidly, which again, we do grapple with. I think the first big one is just this – the hope but also the peril of really betting on tech first solutions, right? I continue to believe that given the scale of our country and if we really want to see some big change in our lifetime, I feel technology is key and that both digital tech and deep tech are going to be critical enablers. Having said that, they do come with their own challenges, again, because of the (Bharat) audience that we’re working with. There are behavioural roadblocks, access roadblocks, affordability roadblocks that come in the way. So that’s one big one. 

Another one that we also hear about a lot is it is going to be hard for one solution to really be able to attack all of what is Bharat, right? It is just a very, very diverse population that varies across cultural context, language, again, economic layers and so much more. What do you see as the biggest challenges that ACT needs to be prepared for in the coming time and in being able to really double down on this tech-first venture philanthropy model?

Future Forward: The path ahead for social entrepreneurship

Mohit: I hope to see more founders and more capital. These two things would be the challenges that I would focus on. I feel with things like ACT and other foundations out there, we just don’t see India’s best talent stepping in to solve some of these hard problems. And I wish I could wave a magic wand to tell people that this is a more purposeful, better mission to follow in life. And if you can give your best years to solving hard problems in education and environment and healthcare, I think we’d all just be way better off. So attracting India’s best talent to these problems is probably statement number one. To that extent, I want us at ACT to try new experiments around incubation, where we actually pick some of these hard problems. So that would be one problem area. 

Second is, I hope eventually, if you go out and you become a $10 billion company, I would want you to give 1% and create a foundation of your company. If we can create a $100 million foundation across 10 companies, that’s a billion dollars of foundation (capital) that can emerge from the startup ecosystem.

Mohit: It’s not just the quantum of money, but those same founders will have a massive vision and ability to actually execute against that vision to use that money in a very catalytic way. So I want to attract more capital that comes not from things like CSR, which is a little bit of a tick box for many, but literally put a percent of your very valuable company into giving back to the communities that have actually nurtured you to be so successful. Capital and people.

Aakanksha: Thank you for surfacing both of those. I want to go back to founders because actually that’s been a theme, I think, in everything you’ve shared today – how your journey in the space began, what’s going to be really valuable in the coming decade as you just articulated. And so one thing again I’ve heard a lot of VCs talk about is – here are the traits of a successful founder, founders who are going to go on to build great companies, maximise shareholder value – these are their recognizable traits. Over the last four or five years, what do you feel are the traits of a successful social entrepreneur? What are the qualities you feel they exhibit, the skills they need to bring to the table to ultimately create what you said, the double bottom line?

Mohit: I think one common trait, whether you’re getting invested in by PeakXV or you’re getting a grant from ACT. Founders need to show up every day. And they need to do that for over a decade. If you really, really apply yourself to a problem for that long, you will find a way. You will crack it. And so this trait of going long, not taking short-term decisions, but knowing that you’ll be doing this and working on this problem 10 years later, just is a very different kind of human being who doesn’t flit or get distracted every time there’s a challenge that comes up. I think the one thing that’s different that I’ve noticed in our social impact entrepreneurs is you don’t need to be so sharp elbowed. For you to win, nobody has to lose. There’s the ability to be a whole lot more collaborative knowing that you have like-minded folks who are trying to solve the same problems and the ability for you to share. For example, India is such a great example of creating Digital Public Goods. I would want ACT to give a lot of grants to a startup who then creates digital public goods that are easily given and transferable for no cost to other startups so that they can keep building on top of that. So I think this collaborative nature is a core part of our entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Aakanksha: Couldn’t agree more. Mohit, you’ve seen a huge transformation in India, would say, maybe 2010 to 2020 with the startup economy and again, India becoming this hub of the largest number of unicorns only behind, I think, U.S. and China. What is your hope for India at large for the coming decade? Especially when it comes to the kind of social change or social movements you want to see in the country, what comes to mind?

Mohit: I think one of the biggest issues going on in the world right now is that the rich are getting richer. Globally, we’re seeing issues around immigration into rich countries and the set of social challenges it’s creating. I think given the size of India, it is hard to move the country as one together. There will be these pockets of acceleration across different parts of our population.

Unless we are able to constantly think of things like the digital divide, constantly think of how digital payments can allow for a more inclusive future, I think we risk seeing some of the frustration and then some of the negative elements of that. And so the dream I have at least is while we continue to measure our success in GDP and growth and so on and so forth, is this ability to measure our success in how many people are able to get a solid education up to 10th grade. How many people have access to basic and better than basic healthcare. The environment, I would say, continues to be a lower priority in India than it needs to be. It gets a lot of lip service, but we are getting more and more accustomed to living in dirty and polluted cities, that’s got to change. So I think India of the future is one where the quality of life, I would say the disparity is not as much.

Mohit:  I think it’s super important at this stage to create very successful role models that others can follow. India had its first set of IITs and they’ve become globally so successful and sought after. Ashish is trying that with Ashoka and you know, Ashoka’s success in itself will not change India, but Ashoka’s inspiration to so many other institutions getting created will transform education. So I feel like that’s the role we play at ACT. Our job is to create social unicorns, if you will, that really deliver an impact in education, in the environment, in health, in gender equality. And if we’re able to do that, not only will we see that one success in that one or two companies, but we should hopefully create a little bit of a snowball effect.  

Aakanksha: Superb. And I’d love to end with a call to action, Mohit. If you had to make a clarion call for the young people in India; folks who are in a position to lend their voice, to lend their time, to lend their money, what would be a big bold call to action that you would make?

Mohit: Look, honestly, this is not a ‘nice to have’. This is not a clarion call; I would say it’s each of our responsibilities to get involved and make yourself accountable to yourself that you need to not just pontificate and talk about these issues, but get involved to solve them. If you think the ACT way is a way to solve it, get involved with us, with your time, your money, or your voice. If you feel there’s a different way to do it, that’s fine too. But get involved. Don’t be a bystander passively to the set of challenges that India faces.

Aakanksha: Love it. Thank you so much, Mohit.

Mohit: Thank you Aakanksha, thanks for everything you and the team do.

Aakanksha Gulati: This brings us to the end of our seventh episode of UnHerd, a podcast presented by team ACT. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channels, where we’ll bring you more Unheard stories of people who are passionate about creating impact at scale in differential ways. People who truly stand apart from the herd. Follow us, like, subscribe and share!

 

UnHerd with Tarun Saini: Building ed-tech for Bharat

Hosted by ACT, UnHerd brings you the unheard stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt the social impact landscape. From social entrepreneurs to venture philanthropists, dive into real-world conversations on what they’ve experienced and learned about changing the status quo.

Our sixth episode welcomes Tarun Saini (Founder, Vidyakul) who, in conversation with Sunaina Mathur (Manager, ACT For Education), shares his experience of building an ed-tech solution for Bharat and talks about the importance of knowing one’s user.

Listen to this episode on our Spotify or watch the conversation on YouTube.

Sunaina: Hi everyone and a very warm welcome to the sixth episode of UnHerd – a podcast hosted by ACT that delves into the extraordinary stories of individuals who are challenging conventions to disrupt India’s social impact ecosystem. 

As you all know, India gained tremendous momentum in online learning during the pandemic and today, is said to be the second largest e-learning market in the world. While we have over 250M children in India’s schooling ecosystem, 80% of these children actually attend state boards. Hailing from underserved communities, these people often do not find high quality, contextualised ed-tech solutions that can help them in their learning journey. 

This is exactly the problem that our guest founder will be talking about. Tarun, from Vidyakul, is on a mission to ensure that ed-tech levels the playing field for Bharat’s children. Having grown up in a small village near Ambala himself, he has witnessed firsthand the constraints of a rural Indian classroom and set out to create an affordable solution that caters to state board students exclusively. An affordable app-based freemium solution that hosts educational content for Hindi-medium, English-medium, and vernacular languages, Vidyakul is helping over 2.5M students across Bihar, UP and Gujarat find success in their board exams to unlock brighter futures. 

Welcome to UnHerd Tarun, great to have you with us today!

Tarun: Same here, Sunaina, and thank you so much for giving me this opportunity.

The spark that lit the fire: Early experiences that fuelled the mission 

Sunaina: You started your life in a small village near Ambala. You grew up, finished your higher education in Australia and spent almost six years working in Australia, which for a lot of people is the ideal life trajectory. But you decided to make that shift back to India. Could you share a bit about that journey?  

Tarun: You mentioned it was an ideal life, but it’s not an ideal life honestly. The struggle is 10 times more than it is here.  

As you mentioned, my childhood was in Ambala. I’m from a small village, which is so small that you could see it in two minutes if you wanted to. Everyone knows each other and that is the beauty of the village. I completed my schooling in a Hindi medium school. Our village had one teacher who taught us everything – physics, chemistry, math – all the subjects.

I had often seen that parents or families believe that they can financially afford to either spend money on their boys or on their girls. If they had enough money, then it was a very different situation, but if they didn’t have basic financial stability, then most families would spend more money on the boys.

But when I landed in Australia, I saw the atmosphere was very different. The value of  women’s education is very different. And after years, when my sister got married and came to Australia, I saw how she built her life. She did her M.Com from a private university and in Australia, she became a chartered accountant and began running the firm. So, with that, we both became ideals for our village. Whenever our friends and family saw us, they saw how our financial situation had changed.  

Our experience made us realise how important education is. One is academic, the second is financial literacy and spending time away from one’s village and home. That was a big learning experience. When I used to travel to India from Australia, where the education system was robust, I saw that our villages hadn’t seen much of a change. So I thought, why not do something to empower the background we came from.

I had built a house in Australia, I had my PR. But I thought, let’s just go back and see how we can start up. I still remember, I made that decision within 7 days. I went to my sister and told her, I’m going by an Air India flight tomorrow. This is the key to my house and car. I may come back, I may not. She said okay. You go ahead. That’s how the journey started.

First principles lens: Building user centricity from the bottom up 

Sunaina: There were a couple of interesting things you said, Tarun. First, the fact that girls don’t get equal opportunities and as you grew older, you understood that maybe some things could be done differently. And we’ll come to that a little later in the conversation.  

The second very interesting thing you mentioned, was the network effect you saw in the village because you and your sister set an example which inspired the rest. Can you talk a bit about that network effect in the village? What made you want to build for Bharat?

Tarun: I think the most important thing is that I come from that same market. Every entrepreneur should be familiar with the market they’re building for. Understand how the consumers live, what they buy, what they use. Each of us three founders at Vidyakul come from the same background. So, that was an advantage.

As for why Bharat? Apart from a deep rooted connection, it’s fun to do something for where you’re from. And I believe very strongly that every family’s situation can change in the Bharat segment, and it can happen through education. Education is the only weapon for them to come out from these situations. 

Sunaina: That’s very beautifully put, Tarun. But this audience is very price sensitive, acquisition costs are very high. How do you connect with your audience? What’s the secret behind Vidyakul’s user stickiness? 

Tarun: We earlier spoke about the community effect, I will give you a very small example. In a village, if even one farmer uses a fertiliser or a new seed variant that improves the crop and yield, the entire village will shift to using that seed and fertiliser. This is because the village is a very small community where everyone talks to one another. For example, when I went to school, the entire village knew which tuition I went for, which books I carried, and if I looked even a bit healthier, people would ask my parents, “What is he eating?”  

 So the community factor in a village is very very strong. I would say that if you give one person your product to use, and that person understands your value and outcome, then by the next year the entire village will be using your product. 

So when building for Bharat, you really need to understand the district, taluka, and village to map it. It’s a very deep market and that’s why I said, those from Bharat know how to innovate for it. (But yes,) it’s a very price sensitive market. Students compare your price with the value they gain out of the product, and education is very high-stakes.  

Education is more of a service market I would say – it’s value driven and so the outcome is at stake. So, you need to be very careful with the quality. We measure impact by assessing a student’s performance before and after Vidyakul. For example, a child who used to get 50% in his exams, who then started getting 70-80% and has consistently improved. We have mapped this very deeply for every child who comes to Vidyakul.

So it took a year and we saw the network effect take place in one village. We visited that village and highlighted the student’s example. That she – let’s say she’s Ram’s daughter who studied at Vidyakul – has topped the district. If you publish that (information) in that particular district and village, where everyone knows everyone, it becomes impactful. And the quality that you deliver should be consistent. 

Sunaina: I want to dig deeper into gender. You spoke about your own home and the problem of inequity is so pervasive in even urban India, and it’s quite ingrained in rural India as well. So how do you navigate this at Vidyakul?  

Tarun: 100%. I think this is the day to day task for us to educate the families.  

Education is a movement and we’re just at its starting point. Awareness is the most important thing. Parents need to know how much value education will create for their children.

 If we speak of women’s education, in tier 3 and tier 4 towns, mothers are very aware, because their mindset is very clear. Whatever they went through, they don’t want their daughters to go through. They are very clear that their children are destined for more than just household chores.

So when you target boys, you usually run campaigns for the dad. But when you run a campaign for girls, the mother should be there. Because the emotions are much stronger. If she fights for her daughter’s education, the husband will listen.

Traversing tough roads: Building with patience and deliberation 

Sunaina: Thank you so much for sharing that Tarun but it wasn’t an easy journey. It was an uphill battle, especially considering the time that ed-tech has been having. And you’ve still been at it and you’ve been able to build a sustainable business out of it with a very price sensitive audience. If you can share a bit about the challenges that you faced during this journey, and how you navigated them?  

Tarun: Everyone has the impression that as soon as Covid came, the ed-tech landscape began to boom. But honestly, that was the first stage of ed-tech in Bharat. Those in metro cities were already aware of ed-tech–how to use it, and they had the money. But when it comes to Bharat, they knew nothing about ed-tech when Covid hit. There was some distant awareness through platforms like YouTube and Whatsapp, but that’s when the ed-tech market in Bharat actually began forming. 

While in metro cities the usage of ed-tech is falling, but in Bharat, it’s just starting to rise. And we are very proud to say that within the last 3 years, we have built a very strong fundamental business, where we’ve gone from 1000 paying users to lakhs.  

I think the biggest challenge was being patient. As a founder, you want everything to happen within a month. Second is building the team. I think for us the biggest advantage was that we came from a similar background, but finding the right mindset is a very unique task because you can get good people who actually build for the metros and they understand their market. But people who are building for Bharat are in very limited companies and you have to go in the districts or states to find the right people to build with.

Third, when we started, we mostly got influenced by other ed-tech apps. And this is the first stage with founders. They take an app, say it’s very good and think it’ll be successful if they change it in certain ways. But it doesn’t work like that. One day we said, we are going to build for our own market. We’ll build a product based on our own understanding. And right now, we are at a stage where our product is very unique, and is so deeply embedded in Bharat, that we know if there are issues in particular districts with a particular subject, their homepage will actually reflect those issues. That’s how deeply we’ve understood our end users. 

So I would say, don’t get too excited in the early stage. Don’t copy anyone. And we made that particular mistake initially, so we learnt to stick with our audience and build for them.

Future forward: Advice for entrepreneurs building for Bharat 

Sunaina: Two things that you said that I do want to highlight. One big thing is building bottom up. Not just the product and the feedback, but even the team. Because ultimately, for every insight, you won’t be able to go on ground. And that’s where your team’s insights become valuable. That is why, even though the Vidyakul team has 100 plus people, the Bharat centricity is still there. 

And the second thing you said, that ed-tech in Bharat is still nascent. During Covid it was in its awareness phase and only now is it reaching widespread acceptance. If you were to articulate specific advice for people who are starting out in ed-tech and tell them about the Bharat opportunity, what would you like to tell them? 

Tarun: It’s important to build knowledge and perspective of Bharat. Most people building from ed-tech have themselves been through CBSE and good schools, and are therefore solving challenges they faced themselves. But CBSE is a very small part of the entire education system. UP alone is much bigger than the CBSE. CBSE has 21-25 lakh students in 10th grade and UP’s Hindi medium board has 32 lakh students yearly, so it’s much bigger. So those who don’t come from that segment will have challenges in building that mindset.  

I truly believe that the day we see more founders from Bharat, they will automatically start building for Bharat. That I am 100% sure. Because they have lived that pain, they are able to relate to it.

Sunaina: Building for Bharat from Bharat. That’s beautiful. Tarun, so we are coming towards the end of the conversation, but a reflective question is, is there something you would change about Vidyakul’s journey? If you were starting Vidyakul today, what would you do differently?

Tarun: The failures we have seen in the past 3-5 years have taught us to build sustainably. So I have no regrets. But for those who are solving for Bharat, I’d encourage them to find entrepreneurs building for similar segments. This will help you fast-track the process.

And if I were to go back, I would stick with a very small segment. When we started, we were excited to do everything. But if I were to start again, I will pick one district and I’ll go very deep into that particular district first for PMF and once I have a profit and then I build for Bihar or any other state. So I think those two would be my top lessons.

Sunaina: 

Thank you so much, Tarun, for taking the time today!

This brings us to the end of our sixth episode of UnHerd – a podcast presented by team ACT. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channels where we’ll bring you more unheard stories of people who are passionate about creating impact at scale in different ways. People who truly stand apart from the herd.

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ACT For Health welcomes Forus to its portfolio

India faces a significant challenge with visual impairment, accounting for one-fifth of the global disease burden. Recent surveys suggest that nearly 62 million Indians encounter visual impairment, with conditions like diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration increasing in prevalence due to the ageing population as well as the high occurrence of NCDs like diabetes and hypertension that cause ophthalmological complications. At the same time, uncorrected refractive error significantly burdens public health, as approximately 60% of visually impaired individuals require corrective measures. These errors can diminish productivity and hamper learning, particularly in school children. Furthermore, they may pose safety risks to the public when professionals such as drivers suffer from these conditions.

While technological innovations in ophthalmic screening have been around for decades, most of the routine screening devices are expensive, bulky, and not suitable for resource-limited settings. For example, a table top fundus camera used routinely in ophthalmic clinics can range from Rs. 15 to 20 lakhs. This has made widespread screening difficult outside of well-equipped urban centres, leaving many without access to essential eye care services.

There is an urgent need to develop and deploy innovations that are not only affordable but also portable and digitally enabled for tele-medicine applications, which could operate under resource constrained settings. Forus Health, a holistic digital ophthalmology platform that unifies devices, specialists, and AI to deliver comprehensive eye screening services globally, is addressing this gap in a big way – their proprietary hand-held autorefractors and non-mydriatic fundus cameras are designed to screen for refractive errors and retinopathy respectively in resource constrained settings without the need to dilate pupils.They have undergone rigorous clinical and field testing in multiple reputed institutions and have been certified by CE and USFDA. 

Our grant support to Forus, in collaboration with the Karnataka Department of Health and C-Camp, has enabled the deployment of Forus’ fundus cameras (3nethra series camera) at Primary Health Centers (PHCs) and Community Health Centers (CHCs) across Karnataka to operationalise tele-ophthalmology in a hub and spoke model. In these centres, optometrists would capture and upload retinal images on a cloud-based digital platform, allowing ophthalmologists at district hospitals to review the images at their convenience and recommend follow-up actions for patients. This model allows for easy access and timely referral for retinal conditions at the periphery and given the high patient volumes at these centres, the auto refractometer assists optometrists in quickly optimising prescriptions, thereby reducing the turnaround time.

Scaling in public health demands evidence from real-world settings, optimization of workflows and resources, and clear demonstrations of improvements and benefits over existing eye screening methods, along with the ability to build capacity within the system at scale. It must show volume and agility with improved quality of healthcare delivery. This deployment in KA’s public health settings aims to generate such evidence. It will help scale this initiative to the entire KA state and integrate technology-driven solutions into wider public health settings. 

As ACT For Health, we look forward to catalysing Forus to drive an improvement in the accessibility and quality of eye care, especially among underserved populations like school children and rural populations. At a larger level, we also expect that the use of AI and telemedicine platforms will also  boost the capacity to manage and treat eye conditions effectively at the primary care level​. Our ongoing commitment to this initiative is aimed at creating a sustainable and scalable model of eye care that aligns with our mission to enhance the quality of life through appropriate healthcare innovation!

 

ACT For Health welcomes Evolve to its portfolio

India’s mental health crisis affects over 197 million people, with 70-90% of mental illnesses remaining untreated. This silent epidemic disproportionately impacts marginalized groups, including the LGBTQIA+ community, who are three times more likely to attempt suicide. Factors such as over-pathologization, deep-seated stigma, and a shortage of trained queer-affirmative therapists contribute to the disparity in mental health care for the queer community.

To address these challenges, ACT For Health is proud to support Evolve—a digital mental health platform specifically designed for the LGBTQIA+ community. Evolve aims to improve mental health outcomes for the queer community by addressing ‘minority stress’ and positively shifting user habits and behaviours through its 3Cs approach: Content, Community, and Coaching. This method offers customised support, including wellness resources, community support groups, and queer-affirmative therapy, addressing key issues like sexual and reproductive health, gender dysphoria, and violence, among others. 

Digital platforms like Evolve are promising because they provide confidential, remote access to care with fewer resources. Tailoring support to LGBTQIA+ needs has proven effective, yet interventions in India remain limited. Evolve’s mobile-first and tailored approach shows strong potential for offering accessible, affordable, and high-quality services.

ACT’s support will enable Evolve to expand its base by over 100,000 users in India and enhance its offerings through vernacular content and B2B2C partnerships with NGOs, CSR initiatives, and corporates. This initiative aims to position Evolve as the leading mental health resource for the LGBTQIA+ community and improve access for underserved communities. We are excited to support Evolve’s mission to deliver better mental health outcomes to more than a million people!

 

LearnTube joins the ACT For Education Portfolio

India is grappling with a severe employability challenge, with 45% of India’s graduates unemployable and 83% of the unemployed are youth who have completed their secondary education. For many, education has not translated into job opportunities due to skill mismatch, poor soft skills, etc. Faced with these gaps, millions of Indians turn to YouTube, Google, and even ChatGPT to learn skills that would make them employable. However, these resources often lead to unguided, time-consuming, and unstructured learning. In a world overflowing with freely available knowledge, the challenge lies in transforming this content into meaningful learning experiences.

LearnTube’s multi-agent AI model addresses this challenge by curating the best content from the internet and converting it into a personalised, live one-on-one learning experience. With real-time support and job application assistance, LearnTube is revolutionising how individuals learn and grow professionally. Within just seven minutes, LearnTube can curate content and build a personalised learning plan tailored to any career goal, achieving an impressive 94% content accuracy across any topic or subject. Their career-focused syllabus creation and hyper-personalization stand out as ways to build industry relevant skills.

LearnTube has over 1 million users, with 70% of them coming from households earning less than INR 5 lakhs annually. With paid services starting at just INR 500 per course, LearnTube remains one of the most affordable career-oriented learning solutions available. 

ACT is proud to support LearnTube’s mission to scale to over 2 million users in the next year. Through this grant, we aim to support LearnTube in two key ways: one, unlocking new acquisition channels through partnerships with job platforms and influencer networks and two, developing AI assessments and a software tool to measure learning outcomes including knowledge retention, concept application, and practical outputs.

Under ACT’s work in skilling and livelihoods, we are committed to supporting solutions that build clear career pathways for learners and are thrilled to be part of LearnTube’s journey in enabling better career outcomes through the power of AI!

 

UnHerd with Jo Aggarwal: Improving access to mental healthcare with AI

Hosted by ACT, UnHerd brings you the unheard stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt the social impact landscape. From social entrepreneurs to venture philanthropists, dive into real-world conversations on what they’ve experienced and learned about changing the status quo.

Our fifth episode welcomes Jo Aggarwal (Co-Founder, Wysa) who, in conversation with Krisha Mathur (Director, ACT For Health), shares her experience of building a vernacular AI-powered digital solution that aims to make mental healthcare easily accessible and affordable for Bharat.

Listen to this episode on our Spotify channel or watch the conversation on YouTube.

Krisha: Hello folks and welcome to the fifth episode of Unheard, a podcast hosted by ACT that delves into the extraordinary stories of individuals who are challenging conventional principles to disrupt India’s social impact landscape. 

Being a health-tech entrepreneur in India is a little bit like being Sisyphus who rolls the boulder uphill every day. It needs hard work, motivation, lots and lots of patience – only to begin all over again the next day. COVID has also taught us that while this is a hard space, there are many challenges that are lurking beneath the surface that we have barely begun to scratch. 

One such issue in India is the mental health challenge, affecting almost 1 in 5 Indians and with extreme social and cultural stigma. But while the scale and complexity of this issue may be a challenge, we also have determined entrepreneurs driving innovative tech, showing our shoots of green. Our guest today is one such entrepreneur, a pioneer in this space with a personal journey working ground up in the corporate sector. After spending 6 years in the Middle East trying to help young people thrive in a post-conflict environment, she and her partner realised that it didn’t take big money or big names to make impact, but it takes commitment to build a strong product, perseverance to work on the ground, and above all, to keep the user always first. Today, she and her partner are trying to solve the mental health issue through their AI-first venture, Wysa, supporting almost 6 million users globally.

Welcome to UnHerd, Jo. So lovely to have you here!

Jo: Lovely to be here.

The spark that lit the fire: Overcoming personal battles to help others  

Krisha: I want to start by going back to where it all began. Your journey has been so non-linear and so interesting. In your own words, can you describe your story to us and what helped you build Wysa?

Jo: So, I went through life always wanting to be an entrepreneur, a social entrepreneur rather. We were just born a little too early when entrepreneurship wasn’t as accessible to people without that background and neither was social entrepreneurship to people who wanted to have a good life as well. It was all non-profit, so one became a part of the most ‘happening’ thing – putting India on the map at that moment – which was the IT sector. I was one of the first batches of Infosys. And at each point, I asked – how do I actually do this with a little more meaning? So I moved from tech to e-learning, because it felt like it could actually solve a real problem. Then I moved from that to skilling and jobs and employability because it felt like it was the main thing that everybody really needed to solve for young people, especially in this part of the world and in the Middle East and North Africa. My aspiration was always to become something like a Wikipedia, because I was in e-learning and then Wikipedia came along and solved the problem I wanted to solve for e-learning. But if you run a business to business, a sort of B2B business, then you’re always limited by your clients’ needs. So, could I do something that was more B2C, more direct to the consumer? Could I do something that wasn’t hampered by grants and the grant cycle and which started by proving itself in the hands of a user first?

That was the idea. We started out trying to do elder care for some reason. Elder care was a very personal reason for my partner. We came back to India to parents who were in a much different life stage than we had left them and said we need to do something for remote care. But that product kept getting used by people to track their teenagers! I went into depression because I was like, this is my first entrepreneurial adventure. I can’t close it down, but I can’t let it become this either. 

And so we started on that “depression journey”. I came out of it learning about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, experimenting with Artificial Intelligence as a way of feeling heard for the first time with a bot called ‘Eliza’ and thinking that I want to make something like Eliza, but only wiser, and that’s where the name Wysa came from.

But just the power of CBT, the power of reframing one negative thought, and for me that negative thought was that no matter what I do, I’m going to fail, that I’m an imposter, that every success I’ve had, has been me telling stories to the world – which I’m good at – but in real impact, I’m going to fail no matter what I do. That was the core thought I was able to identify through CBT underneath my depression and anxiety. And from that thought, it was reframed into a thought to say that, okay, even if that’s true, even if that’s valid, I still have to do something, so what am I willing to fail at doing? And I found that I was willing to fail at doing something really big. When that thought comes, you don’t want to fail at small things. You don’t want to fail at doing a startup, you want to fail at solving climate change. So for me, it was wanting to fail at solving global mental health. 

It’s very miraculous how overturning a single thought can change your emotional and your behavioural reactions. So we started out by just repurposing what we’d built and we had a little chatbot that was associated with it, because I had this keeda that maybe it’ll work. So I built a little chatbot, which was just multiple choice, no AI alongside it. But we just repurposed our tracking of where an elderly person was. By tracking depression and anxiety, we were able to see where the people were.

There was one lady who came with her husband in a burkha and took a PHQ-9 GAD-7 and did not show any depression signs, while our passive sensing was showing that she should be depressed. We were able to ask the doctor, “What happened? This person should be depressed. Why are you saying she’s not?” and we found out that she needs to be called again individually, that she was severely depressed and suicidal. So these kinds of things were happening, but nobody was getting therapy. And we thought, yes, we might detect that somebody has depression, but if there’s no support available, what’s the point? We’re not solving anything here.

But the people who were using the chatbot were actually showing markedly reduced depression signs. That made us really think this is possible. But you still don’t feel like you have the permission to do something in a space that you know nothing about. I thought, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a psychologist. So, we went to Dr. Vikram Patel, who now is at Harvard Medical College. We showed him our data and we said, “What’s happening?” And he said, “Even asking a person how they are is therapeutic. What you’re doing is therapeutic. And this is the future of how access is going to be created. Keep doing this.” That gave us a lot of faith. If the people at the top of this wheel believe that this can happen, and if it’s a skill that can be built, then I know how to do skilling for people! So I think I just went back to the core of what I knew how to do, which was skilling, and then started building Wysa from there.

Traversing tough roads: The three pivots every entrepreneur must think through

Krisha: This is such a fascinating story, Jo, and thank you for also sharing the personal story behind it. I think we keep hearing that being a founder is about failing fast, learning fast, pivoting fast. Your journey clearly has a lot of pivots along the way. What have been these big pivots (for you) and what has driven them?

Jo: You talked about Sisyphus; sometimes I feel like it is more like the Ship of Theseus. You keep taking away parts and putting them back in (and wonder) if it’s even the same company anymore. I think it’s important for you to pivot a product if it’s not finding product market fit. And those pivots are happening till date. 

The (first) pivot started when we were doing an elder care product and pivoted thrice within the elder care product, which finally ended up from a hardware device to an app. And so they were varied product pivots mainly because of either the ability to differentiate yourself in the market or raise funding and so on and so forth. There’s some pivots that you’re doing at a seed stage just because you need product market fit with investors. The second type of pivot is in the hands of the user. The hardware was a great product market fit in the hands of the user. But no investor wanted to fund it. And what investors wanted to fund, was a really leaky bucket. Get x number of downloads and they then send it to other people; for those other people, it’s too new a concept and so, they don’t download it. So there was no PMF. And when you don’t get PMF, it’s really important to pivot fast because it can really drain your energy. The more effort you put in, the less rewards you get. And that really makes you question everything about yourself.

So from there, we went into solving a tech problem, which was passive sensing, and that would have had a good investor tracking, but for us that was not going to solve the problem. So there was a mission pivot. Are we even doing something that is mission-aligned, because we said we’re willing to fail at solving global mental health. Now, if it’s not going to solve global mental health, that hypothesis has failed, even if you’ve got investors backing it. This is the pivot that I feel we did because we were committed to solving the problem. And that makes all the difference. So over the years, walking away from certain investors, walking away from people who said you have to focus only on the US or the UK and not the rest of the world, walking away from big brand investors, and all of that just so that you can have a shot at solving this problem. 

So in India, Wysa is not mental health. In India, Wysa is now Mann Ka Coach, Jo Badle Soch. It’s skilling because there are budgets for skilling. India spends 100 million dollars on mental health of which 80 million goes to NIMHANS. But there isn’t really a budget for early stage preventative mental health. Everybody understands the need, that the reason you’ll succeed or fail is mental resilience. So I’ve come back into that skilling space and a lot of the work that we’re doing with ACT, with adolescent girls, young mothers, with gig workers, all of that is coming from a skilling space and that is really scaling.

Krisha: That’s so interesting to hear and you know, listening to you, I’m also sort of recalibrating what an amazing journey we’ve had with you over the last year or so, just taking Wysa to India [Bharat] – seeing firsthand how difficult it is to take a tech-first solution to the last mile. Jo, while you’ve talked about challenges on the ground and early failures, there have also been early wins which have helped you figure out this journey along the way. I know there’s many many anecdotes from the ground. Would you like to share with us what these user journeys have been, what has given you early validation that you’re on the right track?

Jo: Absolutely. The first one was six months after launching Wysa. I always wanted to be an entrepreneur. He (Jo’s partner – Ramakant Vempati) didn’t. He could walk into a job and earn more money than we were trying to raise in our seed funding. But he said he would stay if we were able to, you know, prove that this actually worked.

And so we were reaching the end of our six months that he’d given us to prove it. And we got this mail from a girl, from the US, where we never did any marketing. We had no idea that people in the US were using us. And this girl said, “I’m 13. I tried suicide and you’re helping me hold on to myself. Thank you.” And it just broke our hearts. At that point, my partner and I, we just hugged and we said, “Okay, this has a real shot at solving the problem. And you know that you found that product market fit on solving global mental health when somebody who doesn’t know anything about you, who you’ve never tried to reach and who absolutely needs this, finds it useful.

And the second big milestone was meeting Emma. I met Emma, who was a nurse in the NHS. She said, “You guys don’t know, but you’re a legend here.” She’d been one of our early users and had been using Wysa for over a year already when she met us. She said, “Look, I have all these young people who come in and we have long waiting lists; we can’t give them anything. So,  I’ve been looking for what to give them. I’ve been trying all the different apps out there, and I started giving them the free version of Wysa. A third of them didn’t need anything else. Especially people with learning disabilities, people who are on the spectrum, they actually preferred this because they don’t like talking to other people.” And then she of course said, “But you guys have to also do this, this, this, and this, and make sure that I can actually prescribe this properly.” So she had actually found a scholarship and was working part-time for free with us for the next year on that scholarship. Just to help us sort all of it out, she became a Clinical Safety Officer and helped us break into the clinical world. We began to understand what it takes to become a digital therapeutic. 

I think with India now, we have a number of these stories come out. We had done the first study of type 1 diabetes patients in Aurangabad. These patients come from the semi-rural areas around Aurangabad as well, it was one access point that we had. And we gave our Hindi app to them. They’re young people who are also struggling with diabetes. And one of the toughest things that happens, especially to adolescent girls there, is that their form of rebellion tends to become not taking insulin. So any issue, from a relationship or mental health perspective, turns into them not taking insulin and they land up in an ICU. So it’s a really vulnerable population. And one of the girls said this to her mother. Now, the mother came back to us and said, “Can I also use the app?” We said, “Why?” And she said, “We always thought my daughter was mentally weak, she’s always very quiet, but since she’s been using this app, she talks to it every day. She comes and tells me, look, why can’t you talk the way this one [the app] talks? Look, it tells me I’m OK as I am, that I’m quiet and I’m alone, and that it’s OK to be like that.” The girl was feeling the sense of validation and self-concept, which is so rare in India. She was able to communicate that, using the app, to her mother and her mother was agreeing to change how she thinks about her daughter. And I just felt that if we can make a change at that most intractable space, if we can reach there, then we can change the world. And that’s really where my mission is now stemming from – to get 10 million people in India to use this every day. 

First principle lens: Self-efficacy as a lens to find the right collaborators

Krisha: That is so incredibly moving, Jo, and thank you for sharing that. These stories are what keep us going everyday. Being an entrepreneur can sometimes be very lonely, but if you had to reach out and share your learnings with fellow entrepreneurs who are on the same path as you, what would you say?

Jo: Well, one is a rule I’d already learned before we set up Wysa. And I think it’s stood us in good stead. There is a concept that I live by called self-efficacy, which is defined as my confidence in my ability to achieve my goals. So that can apply to fitness self-efficacy or entrepreneurship self-efficacy, whatever your goal might be, but it has the highest correlation versus any other kind of resource you might have. If you have self-efficacy, then you’re more likely to achieve your goal than any other resource, money, power, anything. 

And so no matter what people offered us, especially in the earlier stages but even today, no matter how close they were, no matter how big a brand they were, we had just one rule, which was did they increase their self-efficacy or not? And if somebody made us feel more confident that we would achieve our goal, then we’d bring them in. If not, no. And there are plenty of people on this journey who will make you feel like you can do nothing without them. But if they’re with you, you’d be amazing. If they’re not, then you’re just the same as any college kid trying to do something. They’re not increasing your self-efficacy, they’re increasing their own. So it’s really, really important to bring in partners who can do that in this journey.  

Krisha: I think listening to you, I’m once again convinced that running a startup in India is not a solo sport. It’s a team activity. And I think founders have to deal with everything from building the product, then clinical validation, then figuring out the path to market. And it’s all relentless all the time. What do founders need to do differently to build better, faster, while being kind to themselves?  

Jo: The one thing I always tell founders to do is not to seek validation from others, only to seek validation from revenue and users. So know where your product market fit lies. That investor product market fit is a very fickle thing. If it can dissuade you from doing something, it should. But don’t do something just because they [investors] are interested in it. Don’t use the investors as a way of saying, okay, if the investors are not interested, I won’t do it. Then you shouldn’t be doing it anyway. But if you absolutely want to do something, and the users like it and you can figure out a way to get the money, actually forget about the investors. Move fast, go B2C first if you’re trying to change the world because the users will actually teach you everything you need to know.

Because if you’re changing the world, then everything is either B2C or B2B2C. At the end of the day, your end person is a consumer. And if you’re a mission-driven startup, don’t lose that sense. If you do end up going B2B in a mission-driven startup, it’s very, very easy to start forgetting that you set this up for the user, not your client. And even within Wysa, we’re sort of reattaching ourselves to the users within our clients, because the clients can get you into so many different things that they care about, which have nothing to do with the user.

Almost every year you have to go back and remember why you set this up. Almost every year you have to found the company that you wanted to found originally. You have to find it again within the company that you founded.  

Krisha: I mean there’s also the other side. B2C in India for digital products is actually not very easy. It’s actually a very expensive play. And while B2B may be easier, there’s also the cost side that you talked about. There’s financial sustainability. How do you think as a digital health founder, you can balance the two? Because it’s also not an easy journey – you do have investors to answer to, but you want to do good. So what does that balance look like between the two?

Jo:  Think of it as three different product market fits. So you have your mission fit, you have your user fit, and you have your budget fit. There has to be a budget somewhere. A consumer might hold a budget. So consumers do pay. Look at the typical household budget. If you’re an education startup, you might be able to fit into their budget. But for mental health, that wasn’t an option because people who have mental health issues just do not have the money.

So for us, that became consumers only, but you still need product market fit for the consumer. Because everybody else will pay you because that consumer is actually deciding to use you and changing their behaviour, their thinking, creating that trusted space with you quickly. All of that is with the consumer. So you still have to start B2C because the more you intermediate yourself and the consumer, the less you learn.

And at the end of the day, what’s your theory of change? How are you actually going to solve the problem? Because that’s also a very easy one to get distracted from, between trying to do what the people with the money want you to do and do what the user wants you to do. Maybe you do both and still don’t solve the problem. So when you can get all three, then magic happens.

Future Forward: The Archimedian lever and GenAI for mental healthcare 

Krisha: So if I got that right, you have to learn fast and learn first and then build for the customer – I think it’s a long journey by any standards, right? And the fact that you’ve gotten there and are getting there every day is what keeps us at ACT really, really excited. The mental health challenge globally and in India is what clearly is what’s driving you, is what you want to solve for. But helping people while balancing investors, helping people while doing good for the organisation is not easy. What do the next 4-5 years look like for you and what do you think it looks like for the sector, both globally and in India?

Jo: I think we are at that inflection point where we are poised to grow. We’re at the right place. We’re the world’s largest mental health chatbot. We’re making the most revenue of any chatbot in mental health and we have the most evidence, the most safety, the most privacy, all accredited internationally. And now we are well positioned with the advent of GenAI. Working with you, we’ve been able to bring it in low resource languages and redesign it, figure out our story, figure out a go-to-market, find partners within the government who are willing to support us. So find that sustainability path and figure out how it’s going to go to scale. I feel like in the next 5 years, it’s like Archimedes used to say, if we’re doing all these Greek metaphors – “give me a lever long enough and I’ll move the world.” And I think we’ve identified that lever.

Today, we are at 6.5 million across the world using it off their own volition. But that’s still not every day. That’s people who’ve downloaded the app and used it. So if we can get it to a level where people are just actively using this, changing how they think, then we truly can move the world. In the next five years, I want 10 million people using it every day. By 2035, we want to get to 60 [million].  

Krisha: We know you’re really excited about where Gen AI comes in all of this. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what you’re seeing in the offing and what about AI and mental health is getting you excited?

Jo: Everything. I feel like AI is finally delivering on the promise of computing. The original promise of computing, when those of us who were first introduced to computers, we imagined that computers would do what GenAI is doing today. We imagined that you could talk to a computer about things that nobody else would hear and that it would talk back to you. And a lot of the world for kids who are coming in today, when they look at GenAI, that’s the first thing they do. They talk to it about things that they can’t talk to their family about.  

But now I’m seeing this everywhere. We had to explain to people why AI and mental health. And now almost every college has a dozen kids who are setting up a mental health chatbot with GenAI right? Because that’s just the most obvious use case. That’s what they’re talking to them about. So yes, AI, mental health. 

But the big thing is that you really need something which is a good coach. And it’s like everybody can teach. So, Chat GPT can teach technically, but is everybody a great coach? Is everybody going to change your mind, build that therapeutic relationship? For that, you need that time, evidence, patience that we have spent over the last eight years. And you need that credibility of having published evidence, having had large partnerships, having done that with the safety and security. And that’s what we now bring in this post Chat GPT world to say, we figured out how to do it in a way that protects the user, that delivers the outcomes, that makes sure that there are humans in the loop, that there’s evidence against everything.

And I think it’s really important to have players like us because otherwise it’s just as easy for people to get disenamored by mental health and AI. It just takes one incident for everybody to just ban it. Right now, everybody understands the potential, but everybody’s a little scared about the fallout if something doesn’t go right. And we are here to show that you can actually reduce mental health risk with GenAI. So everything that goes out of Wysa has to demonstrate our legitimate use of AI, lowering mental health risk. And I think we’re paving the way there and setting up those standards that then hopefully will build an industry.

Krisha: This has been absolutely amazing, Jo. Thank you so much for joining us in this conversation. 

This brings us to the end of our fifth episode of UnHerd – a podcast presented by team ACT. If you enjoyed this episode, subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channels where we’ll bring you more unheard stories of people who are passionate about creating impact at scale in different ways. People who truly stand apart from the herd.

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ACT For Environment welcomes altM to its portfolio

India generates approximately 500 million metric tons of agricultural waste annually, with 150 million metric tons left over even after biofuel processing. Around 100 million metric tons of this waste is burned, causing significant air pollution with pollutants like PM 2.5, CO, and CO2. This practice not only harms the environment but also misses the opportunity to transform this waste into valuable industrial inputs.

Launched in 2022, altM addresses this challenge by transforming agricultural waste into bio-materials like cellulose and silica for industrial use. Their innovative approach aims to not only turn agricultural waste into industrial value but also reduce industrial reliance on petrochemical-derived input materials by offering sustainable alternatives.

altM is now looking to focus on developing lignin from agricultural waste—a high-value input that has the potential to replace petrochemicals in adhesives, surfactants, construction materials and more. From an environmental standpoint, altM’s process provides significant climate advantages by using 30% less energy, 70% less water, and 75% fewer chemicals compared to traditional wood-based lignin manufacturing processes. Additionally, agri-derived lignin as a product has a 22% lower Global Warming Potential (GWP) than petrochemical inputs, potentially reducing around 1500 metric tons of CO2 emissions by 2030.

However despite its abundance, both in its natural form as well as a by-product of certain industrial processes, lignin is often discarded or burned because it is a complex polymer that is tough to standardise. Its molecular structure contains organic and inorganic impurities, making it unsuitable for industrial use without significant cost-intensive purification. This complexity has led to minimal innovation on lignin in India, which is essential for its large-scale adoption. altM aims to leverage its technology to conduct an application-led study that would address this innovation whitespace by identifying the best crop waste for high-quality lignin extraction as well as determining the right purification and characterization values needed to enable the commercial adoption of lignin as a viable industrial input.

From an industrial use-case POV, if we were only to consider the bio-adhesives segment, lignin-based adhesives offer superior water resistance and bonding strength compared to traditional phenolic resins, along with cost advantages. Adopting lignin as a sustainable alternative in other industries like construction, automotive, and aerospace could drive substantial reductions in industrial carbon emissions.

ACT For Environment is supporting altM in conducting an intensive application-led study with a highly acclaimed global research entity and leveraging their technology to develop pilot-ready prototypes for agri-waste derived lignin. This grant will help altM advance from a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 3 to TRL 7, potentially facilitating the commercialization of lignin-based products by optimising purification costs and ensuring consistent product quality.

We’re thrilled to catalyse their journey as a first-mover in the agri-lignin space in a bid to enable a more sustainable and decarbonized industrial future for India!

Rucha Phadke: My journey from being an architect to becoming an ACT For Environment Fellow

I’m Rucha, and I recently completed the ACT Fellowship program as an ACT For Environment Fellow. My journey to learn more about sustainable food systems is what led me to this program and has been anything but typical! After six years as an architect and a regenerative landscape designer, my perspectives shifted by almost 360° when I joined ACT. Suddenly, I had to zoom out to look at climate challenges on a national scale and think BIG!

At ACT, I had to shift from focusing on the intricate details required for program/project design and implementation to viewing climate-resilient agriculture at a macro level and the journey was equal parts a rollercoaster ride and equal parts rewarding. Contributing towards reimagining ACT For Environment’s investment thesis within the agriculture domain was crucial in this journey because up until last year, the investment focus had broadly been on land rejuvenation, water security, waste management, energy transition and air quality. When the 2nd cohort of Fellows came on board, the two of us tagged to the environment vertical realized that we’d soon be working on realigning this thesis to the larger northstar of decarbonisation – with agriculture and food systems being one of the key focus areas within the framework.

And I took on the challenge! Before scouting the solutions landscape to ensure the thesis was relevant to an Indian context, I knew of limited solutions in the agriculture and food sector. Upon extensively exploring the ecosystem, I was exposed to many different kinds of innovative solutions – I had the opportunity to speak with founders, policymakers, investors, and other stakeholders to understand the challenges within the sector, identify their roles, and contributions, and figure out where ACT’s capital could be truly catalytic. These conversations just reinforced in my mind the need for collaboration in the development sector, where multiple stakeholders worked together to solve complex problems.

This process also allowed me to pursue my passion for food systems while leveraging my on-ground knowledge from working with NGOs. I realized how complex fixing Indian food systems is compared to other climate tech interventional areas. It requires balancing climate impact, food security, groundwater recharge, biodiversity, and farmer incomes. Developing an investment thesis helps in prioritizing problems and making informed decisions. Knowing that this thesis will guide ACT’s investments towards ‘fixing’ the Indian food systems in the next couple of years was incredibly fulfilling!

Overall, my journey from architecture to tackling food systems at ACT has been quite transformative. It was like going from sculpting a masterpiece to managing an entire art gallery—both require meticulous attention to detail, but one also needs to see the grander vision to succeed!

Applications for the 2024-25 cohort of the ACT Fellowship are now open! Click here to apply before the deadline of 13th August, 2024.

Lakshay Talwar: My journey from being a social entrepreneur to becoming an ACT For Health Fellow

I’m someone who is very passionate about enabling livelihoods and at the time I applied for the ACT Fellowship Program, I was channelling my own social entrepreneurial energies as the co-founder of AeSha Foundation – a grassroots lab for increasing women’s proactive participation in public life through income-generating work, civic engagement, and meaningful social life in low-income settlements.

I was looking for perspective at the time; being a social entrepreneur is a challenging body of work and I felt the need to look at it from a different set of eyes in order to be able to build better, faster and stronger. During my time as an ACT For Health Fellow, I had the opportunity to spearhead the Implementer’s Network – a key strategic initiative that aims to facilitate the deployment of market ready health-tech innovations at the last mile through partnerships with grassroots NGOs, state governments and ecosystem partners. Simply put, it provides a testing ground for tech innovations to find product-market fit within some of India’s most rural, remote and underserved regions.

The network comprises over 20 organisations actively engaged in high-impact work at the last mile. Forging collaborations with these organisations helps achieve several objectives:
Generate evidence on the effectiveness of tech-solutions in improving critical health outcomes at the last mile
Provide startups with real world feedback and pathways to scale sustainably with government and NGO partners
Enable implementation partners to enhance programmatic outcomes by piloting and integrating innovative tech solutions

Working on the Implementer’s Network turned out to be a highly enriching experience for me. My responsibilities included onboarding partner organisations, fostering strategic collaborations between like-minded startups and partners, and co-designing and monitoring pilots to ensure sustained outcomes. My first task as part of this project was to organise a tech-showcase for two of our potential grantees and network partners. The tech-showcase is meant to introduce and demonstrate new, innovative solutions to all our network partners, gather feedback on the feasibility and relevance of the solution, and potentially explore collaborative opportunities for pilots. In this showcase, we demonstrated two innovations – one in mental health and an AI-based oral cancer screening solution – which garnered interest from 8 partners. By the end of the process, we were able to propose 3 pilots for the large-scale deployment of the oral cancer screening technology!

Over the following months, I saw the impact of these efforts firsthand as we successfully onboarded Atom360, an oral cancer screening innovation, as a grantee—something I had the privilege to lead and oversee. The opportunity to engage deeply in pilot design and monitoring was a highly enriching experience. In the last year, we activated a total of 9 pilots and committed close to 5 crores cumulatively for deployments. An illustrative example of this would be the cervical cancer screening pilots we had initiated with our grantee Periwinkle in collaboration with PATH, our implementation partner. I thoroughly enjoyed being involved in getting this initiative off the ground in 20+ primary health care centres across 3 states. My personal engagement spanned from co-designing the Monitoring and Evaluation framework to ensuring regular cadences to monitor progress, and of course, the occasional (or rather, more than just occasional) crisis calls are always the fun part of working on field deployment projects.

If I were to encapsulate my learnings as an ACT For Health Fellow, the following key takeaways come to mind:
Ensuring that we are “Partners” and not “Funders”: If I may take this opportunity to sprinkle some grains of honesty – for those who are tuned into the social sector, most funders tend to fall prey to the saviour complex. I genuinely believe this is one area where ACT truly distinguishes itself by being extremely founder-centric and grounded in its approach.

Holding the fort for the implementers as much as for innovators: This is a difficult one and requires a fine balance. While our core work demands us to be more startup and founder-centric, ACT as a platform requires us to display high-levels of empathy for the needs of the implementation partners. Ensuring that support is extended where needed, listening carefully to what they need to generate mutually beneficial outcomes and mobilising resources accordingly.

Patience (of all kinds) is the key: Can’t emphasise enough on how big a learning this has been for me. From patient capital to patience during setbacks and toward outcomes is a massive skill and value to embody in this journey.

Being close to the field: That’s where it all plays out and that’s from where one learns the most. A non-negotiable.

Finally, as I reflect on this journey, I take back immense learning moments with me, along with deep gratitude for all the wonderful organisations and people, including the team at ACT – for trusting me throughout, guiding my learning process, and letting me tag along in this journey filled with enrichment, challenges and tons of joy!

Applications for the 2024-25 cohort of the ACT Fellowship are now open! Click here to apply before the deadline of 13th August, 2024.

Sailee Rane: My journey from working in the startup ecosystem to becoming an ACT For Environment Fellow

Before I joined the ACT Fellowship, I had spent my career first at McKinsey and later as the Business Head at Razorpay – I was an IIT Roorkee and an IIM Ahmedabad graduate whose professional career was on a steady upward trajectory and I could have chosen to continue on that path. But as an individual, I had begun to feel a strong need to play a part in addressing one of the biggest challenges of our time – climate change.

From a lens of purpose, I knew I wanted to pivot my career towards the climate action space but wasn’t entirely sure where to start or which interventional area to prioritise, and I realised that perhaps I needed the time and the space to first learn more before planning my path ahead. The ACT Fellowship helped me do just that; as an ACT For Environment Fellow, the past 9 months have helped me garner an in-depth understanding of the various nuances of environmental challenges but also the role that innovation and collective action can play in creating sustainable impact at scale.

Apart from being a venture philanthropy fund, ACT is also a platform for collective action – the organisation truly believes in the power of bringing the ecosystem together – and one of the most rewarding experiences during my Fellowship has been seeing the value of building collectives come alive through ACT’s partnership with the Avaana-Startup India Grand Challenge to discover high-potential climate-tech innovations.

It all started with a conversation with Anjali Bansal, the founding partner of Avaana Capital, at the Avaana climate conference on a Friday evening in Mumbai in January. I had heard the team announce the challenge during the event, and while talking to Anjali, we briefly discussed the overlap with ACT For Environment’s investment focus areas. We quickly got on a call together with ACT’s leadership team to discuss the possibilities and by Monday, I was already in touch with Avaana’s team to begin planning how ACT could collaborate on this initiative as a funding partner. ACT isn’t kidding when they say they have a bias for action and interestingly, I saw how that bias has the power to spur organic partnerships within the sector at a surprisingly rapid pace!

The Avaana and ACT For Environment team seamlessly worked together on evangelising the challenge, getting the jury panels onboarded and screening the applications. We even jointly designed the selection criteria and moderated the stream-wise juries to identify 10 finalists that presented before a grand jury, comprising senior leaders from the industry and government in Delhi. The challenge saw more than 15 partners join in different capacities such as funders, jury members, industry experts and researchers and as an ACT Fellow, it was my absolute privilege being at the frontlines.

The challenge was a great success, with more than 400+ applications across the different streams like energy, agriculture, industrial decarbonisation, circular economy, carbon capture/removal/storage and climate data reporting. Collaborating with Avaana definitely helped ACT For Environment identify promising startups that could be potential grantees but most importantly, play a collaborative role alongside the ecosystem in addressing climate change.

While I’ve worked on various different aspects of venture philanthropy and grant-making during my Fellowship (I’ve even successfully taken a climate startup to the IC!) – personally, learning how to collaborate with other organisations has been the most rewarding experience.

As I conclude my Fellowship, I’m now looking forward to building my journey ahead – no matter where I choose to be or what I specifically choose to do, I know that I’ll always be a catalyst of climate impact!

Applications for the 2024-25 cohort of the ACT Fellowship are now open! Click here to apply before the deadline of 13th August, 2024.

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