Siddharth Ragi is the founder and CEO of Havoc Therapy. His startup was incubated at the Indian School of Business (ISB). It has been listed among the 10 Best Mental Health Startups - 2022 by Silicon India Start-Up City. Siddharth Ragi was previously associated with Super GTM as the Growth Analyst.

Siddharth begins, “We have started our journey in 2018. We were trying to figure out something in the entertainment industry. Stress was something with which everyone was dealing and was more important to everyone. Targeting the young generation was very important for us. We built a pilot model in September 2018. But then we realized that it’s not a profitable sector. We inclined ourselves more towards stress where we want to help out our young fellows. Back in school and college, I used to help my friends with their mental health problems like fear and anxiety. Slowly I understood that people require some platform to go out.” 

“Then COVID came and we were trying to position ourselves into mental health at the right time. WTG is an investment firm for the pre-series round. They have helped us in building our prototype. We had 1000 downloads in one month. People will come to our platform, choose their respective topic, and can connect to the trained Psychologist. They can comfortably talk about all their problems and if anybody is identified as serious, they would be escalated to professionals whose services are free. We were addressing lots of youngsters from India. It was a difficult task to tap the unorganized and lower sections of society with mental health. We have time for the market to understand mental health.” 

Siddharth adds, “In the meantime, we came up with the product 'Fleedom' for schools. We realized that 0-8 years is a child's development years and we can identify the problems. We are approaching kids of age 4-10 years. There are certain sets of guidelines and hurdles where we have to take the parent's concern and then solve the problem. We are working with the child's psychologist, schools, principals and will come up with some good for the children.”

The USP of Havoc therapy

Siddharth states, “Initially we were trying to do fancy in the market, was trying something to break and call it havoc. We developed a product called the We hear you app. We have 6000 downloads on the platform. Other mental health products are more focused on wellness through AI-enabled products. But we are different from other platforms in the market as we provide the initial human touch. Our peak hours are midnight when children and youngsters come up with lots of problems. We have a special training program for LGBTQ also. 

Maximum downloads are from Mumbai, then comes Delhi, Hyderabad, and Bangalore. We have trained interns to solve others' problems.”

Funding

Siddharth mentions, "Initially, we have received very minimal funding. We are looking for funding for 1 million dollars, we have recently pitched to the Indian School of Business (ISB). We are looking for venture capitalists who could scale our product globally."

Expansion plans

Siddharth informs, “Havoc therapy has two verticals, ‘We hear you’ for youngsters and the other one is ‘fleedom’. We want to expand it across India. We want to partner with such critical areas wherein patients who are prone to mental stress, we are trying to position ourselves with them  

Next, we are targeting 10,000 milestones by June. And we are coming with some new features.”

Valuable advice

Siddharth concludes, “Find your right mentor in whichever industry you are going. Nowadays, you get lots of information on the internet. So, if you are inspired to start a startup, you have lots of platforms from which you can follow your mentors and can learn from their journey. It's ultimately where you surround yourself, with good content, good people, and real motivation, you can scale up.

(Edited by Renu Gupta)