AI-led health care firm Touchkin raises $1.3 Mn from Kae Capital, others

Just imagine a world where you could Google about your family well-being, and be there for them virtually and practically. This is the idea behind the predictive health care startup Touchkin, which has raised $1.3 million from Kae Capital and a clutch of investors.

The fund raised is exclusively for its AI product Wysa, which address mental health issues.

Talking about Artificial Intellegence and Machine Learning, globally, there are some players that integrate chatbots with healthcare, but none that integrate behavioural health.

Wysa is a chatbot that offers emotional wellness through anonymous conversations. Since its launch late last year, it has done six million conversations with 70k people from 30 countries.

Bengaluru-headquartered Touchkin (Touchkin eServices Pvt. Ltd) started in 2015 by Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati, uses smartphone sensors to identify if a person needs treatment.

The platform can be used for ‘non-mental health’ like lifestyle disorders. Mental health techniques reduce stress, create behaviour change and engage patients especially for lifestyle diseases. It makes them feel less anxious, improve activity, or even quit smoking

"Our technology passively detects behavioural health issues from smartphone sensors and engages them through chat. In a trial with basic smartphones in semi-urban India, we could predict depression in people with diabetes to a 90% accuracy...sharing how they felt with a chatbot helped patients significantly and we saw depression symptoms reduce by 45% over 12 weeks," said Vempati, as reported in TOI

Touchkin was recently selected as one of six startups globally to be a part of the InsurTech accelerator set up by Zurich-based Swiss Re, one of the world’s leading reinsurance companies. They are also in talks of collaboration of Wysa with Swiss Re.

In March last year the firm has raised $400k as a seed funding from a clutch of investors. Global prominent players in this space are Genie, 1DocWay and Limbix while Indian startups like Wayforward Health Pvt. Ltd, Davman Technologies Pvt Ltd and InnerHour are trying to fill the gap in online mental health care ecosystem.