Start-ups are usually an outcome of young age curiosities to build something new for experiment purposes. But so was not the case with highly experienced multi-national employees Jo Aggarwal and Ramakant Vempati.
Living abroad with not-so-well parents back at home is a real pain. This very pain became the sole reason for the couple to go ahead and give birth to Touchkin.
The couple moved back to India in 2012 to look closely at the widespread problem they faced firsthand and felt that big data and mobile technology could be harnessed to create a better way to care for parents and loved ones while being away.
“We wanted a world where you could Google how your loved ones are, and be there for them virtually and practically,” says Jo.
The couple then created Touchkin’s first app called StayClose. Designed to connect family members with those living far away from them, particularly elderly relatives, the app is set up to detect if a family member is feeling depressed by using passive sensing to track factors like sleep patterns.
“How you use your phone can actually paint a pretty good picture of your behavior, and how you are. If someone is feeling low or depressed, this is very likely to show up in their social contact and calling, activity levels, sleep and mobility in and around home. This information is captured by the phone, and analyzed by our predictive platform to see if something is out of the ordinary,” says Ramakant.
After the success of StayClose, the couple shifted their focus to helping people improve their mental resilience in an accessible and non-threatening way, embedded in familiar everyday contexts that actually improve physical health.
“We are now implementing this through our products: Wysa, your ‘happiness buddy’ on the B2C side, and custom behavioural health solutions for enterprise clients and partners on the B2B side,” says Jo.
Touchkin is trying to solve a large problem, through product innovation which is purely limited to imagination. In fact, this approach has been recognized internationally: Touchkin was one of only six start-ups worldwide to be selected by Swiss Re, the world’s largest re-insurance company with annual revenues of $35 billion, to be part of their global accelerator for innovative technologies in insurance.
Touchkin follows a 3-step process of Share-Know-Do to enable better care: share data, analyse this data to know if something is not right, and if so, do something.
The duo thinks of Touchkin as the world’s first ’emotionally intelligent’ AI platform.
“It understands how you are doing from your phone’s behavior and gets you support from a bot (Wysa) or a loved one (StayClose),” says the entrepreneur-couple.
Having raised $400 thousand as a seed funding in March of 2017, the AI platform has recently raised $1.3 million from Kae Capital and a clutch of investors and looks ahead to a diabetes coach which is likely to come soon on the platform.
"Empathy is a skill which can be taught. AI bot which listens & empathises decreased depression by 45% @wysabuddy"#digitalmentalhealth2017 pic.twitter.com/bQqIdHCKAb
— Peggy Loo (@peggyloo) August 1, 2017
