The biggest hurdle that mental health professionals face while using an online platform: COMMISSION. How can we solve this?

A friend of Shweta Srinivasan, who identifies as queer, could not find a therapist they could talk openly to about their identity and how it may have impacted their mental well-being.

Another woman had told her therapist about going through abortion only to get judged and never open up again.

Shweta, who is also a professional therapist, had come across one too many cases of mental health professionals coming with judgements that do more harm to people than offering collaborative solutions they come to seek.

In 2018, she decided to take matters into her own hands and teamed up with her partner Mani Kumar to found TheMindClan, a platform to access the right mental healthcare resources.

Listen to their story here!

Sudha Mahalingam is a resident of Bengaluru and currently a full-time professor at a reputed think-tank. She has always believed in real travel, which she has been indulging in, for as far as she can remember. Not any aspect of her personal life or professional life spanning over 35 years, could come in the way of her travels through 66 countries on the map, some multiple times. She believes that her career in fact fueled, funded, and enabled her travel journeys to a great extent. Most of her travels have been solo – but she does company from time to time. For her, she never wanted to turn her passion into a profession, so travel for her is and will always be a pleasurable hobby.

As energy economist, she consults advice, research, and lecture. As member of National Security Advisory Board, she used to be advisor to the Indian Prime Minister on energy security issues; she was also a full-time regulator of India’s petroleum sector. Now, as visiting fellow at reputed international universities and consultant to international energy organizations, she gets ample opportunities to indulge her passion to travel and photograph. She has published over 400 travelogues and more than a thousand photographs in national and international publications on places some of which seldom figure on the popular tourist map.

Inspiron, India’s first Psychological well-being café transforms the way mental healthcare is accessed and delivered. Their Tech-driven solution model and team of mental health experts address the entire gamut of mental health conditions through scientifically proven methods. Inspiron’s expression- based approach also entails art, dance, music, theatre into therapy. This has been leveraged by more than 2, 00,000 people through individual therapy sessions, educational institutions and corporate enterprises. Their goal is to impact 5 million lives in the next 5 years.

Priyanka believes that unfulfilled childhood memories and dreams are the driving forces that shape our personality. Based on psychodynamic, behavioural, humanitarian and existential theories, her approach is scientific, yet eclectic. She specializes in treating trauma and abuse, clinical conditions like Depression, Anxiety, and OCD. She has worked with numerous industry leaders as a trainer.

India’s youngest palaeontologist, Aswatha Biju loves to learn new things. For the past four years, the 14-year-old has been teaching palaeontology lessons to school and college students. The youngster has now added another feather to her cap. She has collected 136 fossils and is officially India's Youngest Palaeontologist! 

The Mood Space, is an online counseling platform catering to mental health needs with utmost confidentiality, convenience, and affordability. Founded in 2019 by Vidhi Tamboli and Rhea Sawhney these virtual services enable people to seek help from the comforts of their home via audio, video & text support sessions.

With the help of The Mood Space, Vidhi Tamboli and Rhea Sawhney aim to build a mentally healthy generation that sees no stigma. The brand strives towards adopting a hybrid model where automation and coordinates work hand-in-hand to support the client and therapist's needs.

The CEO Rally’s  mission is to empower young creatives to build powerful personal brands to help create a renowned name for themselves and what they do. We have had engaging talks at NIFT, Wipro, and PESU over the month.

Harshita is a Communication Design Graduate, who graduated in the middle of the 2020 and began freelancing and working with several advertising agencies in New York. During this time, she realized that she wanted to build a brand that she could call her own, and lead creative projects. She currently is a consultant at Estée Lauder alongside running her studio full-time.

Sanjana was in her fourth year of Architecture when she realised that even though she didn’t want to pursue a career in the industry, she was passionate about design and creating brand identities, so she forged a path for herself and has now helped several entrepreneurs with the same.

Over the last year, they have started and scaled their online brands where they define strategic visual identities, helping several start-ups across the world build successful, purpose-filled businesses.

Sheela Balan is a practising counselling psychologist from Bangalore, India.  From a very young age her ambition and goal was to get into the world of psychology and be a therapist. After her bachelor’s degree at Mount Carmel College in Bangalore, she had a short stint in the corporate world before pursuing my Master’s program. Her one to one private counselling sessions focuses on rapport building, effective communication, creating an environment of acceptance & empathy, inculcating self-awareness and multicultural competence, equipping those in question with problem-solving skills while inhabiting a compassionate and approachable space, irrespective of the curve balls a particular situation may bring. A quality of hers that adds to her competence is her attention to detail. Clients warm up to her quickly and she enjoys helping them navigate in a manner that is goal-oriented by fostering the kind of thought that aids to learning new behaviours.

Ricron Panels is an innovation-driven company from India, that converts low-value plastic waste into quality sustainable materials for furniture, building, and construction applications, The company has received commendable recognition and awards such as  the Nestle Creating Shared Value (CSV) Prize.

Ricron Panels has previously also been presented with the prestigious "Climate Solver Award 2019" for Technology and Innovation by The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) and "WE SDG Empowerment Award" by the United Nations. Ricron Panels manufactures sustainable building materials for furniture, building, roofing and construction applications, and is becoming a top choice among architects, builders, developers and consumers.

The Gujarat-based company today recycles 500 tons of MLPs each day.

Niyati Sharma is committed to empowering the youth to make informed decisions and  has been working in the domain of sexuality education in India for the past three years.

Shrinivas Shinde was waiting for his Uber ride one Friday evening in LA in 2016 and he chanced upon a group of young people with bags full of beverages going to a house party. This brought a sense of nostalgia and the eureka moment for his startup Playace, which aims to be the Airbnb for house parties.

Launched in 2017, the Mumbai-based platform connects people looking to attend house parties with those willing to host one. It has now enabled more than 1000 house parties across major cities in India.

The idea, Shrinivas says, is to create real-time meaningful connections through various themed get-togethers and house parties.