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heyy, how are you doing? – Redefine employees’ outlook towards mental health

Divya S. (Centre for Advanced Data Science, Vellore Institute of Technology – Chennai Campus, Chennai, India)
Mahima Sahi (Chief Psychologist, heyy PTE Ltd, Singapore)

Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies

ISSN: 2045-0621

Publication date: 13 November 2023

Case summary

Learning outcomes

The learning outcomes of this case study are to understand the business-to-business (B2B) consumer outlook on mental health care in emerging markets; analyse the challenges faced in creating a need for mental health care in Indian workplaces; explore the business attractiveness of the B2B model and understand the business potential of the B2B segment at heyy,; and contemplate different innovative strategies that could change consumer mindset on mental health care in emerging markets.

Case overview/synopsis

Ankit, the founder and CEO of heyy, was facing a conundrum. “heyy,” was built on normalizing mental well-being at workplaces. His mental health-care app heyy, had crossed 50,000 subscribers within a few months of launch. The mobile app was designed to spread mental health awareness and provide various levels of mental well-being interventions. Business-to-consumer and B2B customer segmentation had been targeted by this start-up. The B2B space consisted of employees working with partner organizations. The adoption rates of employees using the features of heyy, declined after the initial app download. The employees had yet to fully become acclimatized to the features of heyy,. Exploring the business potential and investigating the business attractiveness of the B2B segment were the focus of the present study. Ankit contemplated various strategies he could adopt to increase user adoption of “heyy,” services by employees in his partner organizations. The case study strives to address the question – “What are the risks faced by organizations when entering the mental health-care industry in emerging markets like India, where mental health care is still not openly discussed?”

Complexity academic level

This case study is designed to be taught as part of the “entrepreneurship development” and “strategic management” courses for undergraduates, postgraduates and students of executive programmes in management. Students need to be aware of basic strategic management concepts such as BCG matrix, SWOT analysis and business canvas before working on this case study, so they could dissect the case from multiple perspectives to get a comprehensive outlook on the case.

Supplementary materials

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

Subject code

CSS 11: Strategy.

Keywords

Citation

S., D. and Sahi, M. (2023), "heyy, how are you doing? – Redefine employees’ outlook towards mental health", Emerald Emerging Markets Case Studies, Vol. 13 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/EEMCS-11-2022-0436

Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited

Introduction

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you did not do than by the ones you did do. So, throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.– Mark Twain

As the world’s economy continued to evolve, one of the most exciting trends had been the surge in start-up companies. These innovative businesses were not only disrupting existing markets but also creating new ones, driving growth and job creation around the world. The start-up economy was now a vital part of the global business landscape, with new enterprises emerging every day to address a wide range of challenges and opportunities.

One of the most exciting aspects of the start-up economy was the way it was changing the business-to-business (B2B) landscape. Start-ups were often more agile and innovative than established companies, allowing them to create new products and services that met the specific needs of other businesses. They were also more willing to experiment with new business models, enabling them to find new ways to create value for their customers. heyy, was one such start-up founded in the emerging mental health-care sector during the pandemic times. Ankit, the founder of heyy, started the company with a vision to make “Mental health accessible for all” to solve the 1/17 global goal of mankind. Ankit had envisioned heyy, to cater to a myriad of mental health issues faced by individuals. In the growth journey of heyy, Ankit encountered a business dilemma – heyy, had to generate mental health “adoption” in an emerging market where the understanding of mental health concerns was bleak. The business model that “heyy,” had adopted had been designed to cater to the mental health care of both individuals (business to consumer [B2C]) and employees (B2B) employed with their corporate partners.

Although heyy, had been gaining steady popularity in the B2C market, it had been a challenge to generate adoption in the B2B space. Ankit and his teammates brainstormed on strategies to increase the adoption of mental health-care services amongst their enterprise customers and to achieve similar success rates as their B2C model. How would “heyy,” achieve this in an industry that is still evolving, in an emerging market like India? How would they evaluate and exploit the attractiveness of their B2B model?

heyy, the journey

Ankit, an MBA graduate in marketing with diverse global experience, launched heyy, – a revolutionary app for mental health and well-being – in 2021. He had over a decade and a half of varied experience, where he worked with leading international organizations such as Flipkart, Lazada, ITC and Danone. heyy, was an outcome of the professional struggles that Ankit went through which took a toll on his personal and mental health. Ankit later took help from a professional coach, and the entire process of getting personalized, conversation-led care fed into the concept of “heyy,”.

On how the idea for heyy, occurred, Ankit said – “2018–2019 were my first years working in a new company, new country. However, the hopes and aspirations of landing a new role were soon diminished due to the company culture that stymied innovation, was hierarchical and had very little room for discussion. To top it off, the constantly changing CEOs made the company struggle to change and cope, leading to huge attrition and business loss. This had a deep impact on me, especially as I was resettling a family in a new country. I reached my tipping point, constantly struggling at work, questioning my worth and subsumed with negative thoughts. Eventually, I quit. After taking some time off, and trying to start over a new leaf, I got myself a coach. I worked on myself, getting myself out of the rut, rebuilding myself with a coach who listened, letting me express myself as I am, nudging, and making me question some beliefs as I went along. While it’s still a work in progress, I was able to see the benefits of good professional human care, as against some self-help apps like Headspace that I used during the time. Researching more in this space, I could see why exclusive digital care products were not working as expected. It lacked the core need for human care. heyy, was an outcome of my own healing journey that made me question technology devoid of human care, especially in mental health care” (March 2023).

His vision was to make mental health care truly accessible and personal for everyone – both individuals and employees in organizations. Ankit, on what motivated him to enter the B2B space, in his business model when starting heyy, replied – “Macro factors of employee engagement & well-being becoming a high priority across organizations globally was one reason. During our research, we also knew that existing offerings lacked severely when it came to employee adoption. Hence it was obvious that while we are solving for accessibility and adoption, it could make a huge impact in the organization space too” (October 2022). In January 2022, heyy, raised US$555,000 in a pre-seed round of funding. Since then, heyy, had achieved significant growth traction in its B2C and B2B space. Ankit had an uncompromised vision that heyy, had to ensure full privacy for the aid-seeker.

Equipped with the pre-seed funding, Ankit carefully built a team of deeply motivated and diverse individuals who were as committed to the concept of mental well-being as him. heyy, aspired to “Make mental health support truly accessible” by following a human-led conversation-first approach backed by technology. As a digital well-being platform, heyy, was designed to be mindful to not replace human connection with AI-led support and extended “personalized care” maintaining the sensitivity and sanctity of “mental health” needs of users from its analysis based on user data and external research. Ankit had a concrete plan that care at heyy, had to be driven by a preventative approach orchestrated by human connections.

When the team at heyy, analysed the range of mental health issues experienced by its users, it was observed that the mental health spectrum of care was a typical bell-shaped curve, with the issues ranging from mild to moderate to severe, and the maximum concentration (∼95%) of issues fell under the mild–moderate range. heyy, had been designed to extend care across the spectrum and to extend care to cover all severity parameters, namely, mild (with self-care products), moderate (with helper space) and severe (with expert care).

“Helper Space” – positioned as the go-to support system during the mental health journey of the users – had been designed to extend this human-led personalized support 24 × 7 to the users via a chat-based medium. Issues ranging from mild to moderate could be discussed in this space. Helpers were specifically trained to cater to the complex psychological needs of the users by understanding the users’ context and fitting personalized solutions to their problems in the form of scientifically backed self-care resources, namely, guided activities and mini guides (psychoeducation material). The model followed by the helpers had been scientifically backed as the “best chat-based support” by Christ University, Delhi NCR Campus, India, in 2022.

For the more severe issues, therapy sessions, both audio/visual-enabled, could be arranged through the app. In this space, the user could fix a virtual appointment with an array of qualified therapists from diverse cultural backgrounds to cater to the users’ sense of comfort. Within 10 months of launching, the app had been downloaded more than 50,000 times and more than a million messages exchanged and a total of 53,000 h of care delivered, as of October 2022.

When interviewed on how he felt about reaching this new milestone in customer reach, Ankit responded – “Ecstatic. Seeing the fruits of labour materialise is always a great feeling. To top it off, improving the app store ratings was a huge delight, that with growth, we are not sacrificing quality” (October 2022).

Mental health in India

Globally, mental health had been getting the traction it deserved, with WHO predicting that economic losses due to mental health conditions were approximately $1.03tn, between the years 2012 and 2030 alone. Acceptance and understanding of mental health conditions remained inaccessible to a large part of the global population. Recently, a path-breaking international survey was conducted by “The Wellcome Global Monitor: Mental Health” enquiring general population across 139 countries about coping with anxiety and depression. People in countries such as the USA had been open about talking to their therapists and had been more willing when discussing their mental health issues. Even with all this awareness, a recent research study observed that over 60% of employees in the USA had never discussed their mental health with colleagues (Greenwood et al., 2019). When compared with a country with largely traditional workplace norms such as India, mental health awareness had been still at its nascent stages, with a stigma associated, though this perception was changing albeit slowly. Lack of knowledge about the array of mental health issues and narrow perception and attitudes had limited people from discussing their mental well-being with colleagues, friends and even family.

The reason for this stark disparity was obvious with the number of mental health-care professionals in a populous country such as India – with 0.75 psychiatrists for every 100,000 patients, the battle for mental health well-being was only uphill (Padukone, 2022). According to the report in WE Forum (2021), only 66% of Indians had labelled themselves as “very happy” or “rather happy”. A post in CNBC on mental health care in India mentioned a WHO report about how around 100 million Indians were experiencing some type of mental health disorder. This report was corroborated by a survey by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. The recent pandemic had been a catalyst in increasing instances of mental health issues across the nation. The present national spending on mental health had been less than 1% of the total budget, giving quite a stark outlook for the future of mental health care in India (Mohilay, 2022).

The lack of awareness of mental health issues, improper knowledge on identifying mental health issues and being considered a “taboo” subject due to socio-cultural reasons were some of the challenges restraining mental well-being in Indian workplaces (Agoramoorthy, 2020). Conservative thoughts such as these would delay mental health interventions and might also lead to more serious mental health issues if left undetected, and studies claimed that communicating about mental well-being could lead to better understanding and empathy (Patki & Iyer, 2022).

Despite these stark scenarios concerning mental health, a recent study on mental well-being during the pandemic conducted by Deloitte (2021) found that 35% of participants who were Gen Z had consciously taken breaks to cope with their anxiety and stress. Mahapatra et al. (2022) in their study had observed that the Gen Z generation was more focused on mental health and general health than previous generations. In this study, it was also observed that millennials and Gen Z had similar values when it came to dealing with stress, ethics and perceiving work. For a country such as India, with one of the largest demographics of Gen Z and millennials, there was a significant dearth of mental health-care apps. Apart from heyy, other mental health-care mobile apps that had gained traction in India were “Evolve”, “being”, and “jumpminds.AI”. To overcome competition and provide services to a wider range of customers, Ankit designed an innovative business model comprising both individual and enterprise consumers.

Global competitive landscape of mental health-care apps

Recent years had seen a steady increase in people being more self-aware of their need for mental well-being. The instances of young adults and women seeking mental health care through therapists and psychiatrists had been on the rise (USA Today, 2022). Mobile-based mental health-care applications were cost-effective, less intrusive and easily accessible alternatives to meeting mental health-care professionals in person, thus making the former gain popularity in recent years. Recent reports claimed that Calm, Headspace, Sanvello and Betterhelp were the top mental health-care applications in the world (Forbes, 2023). When compared with mental health-care applications originating in Asia, heyy, had made its mark – “heyy, has clocked strong growth based on solid traction in its enterprise and consumer verticals. It has a renewal rate of 100% and 40% in the enterprise and consumer segments, respectively” (ANI report, 2022).

In the increasingly competitive landscape of mental health-care apps, several prominent players had emerged as top competitors. These companies had demonstrated their ability to provide innovative solutions and address the diverse needs of individuals seeking mental health support through mobile applications. Some of the players with significant market share are given in Table 1.

Contending with these competitors would be a challenge for heyy,. Understanding of the competitor market, changing consumer demands and possessing superior technology would aid in increasing the market share for heyy.

Mindsets and mental health interventions

The “heyy,” app was designed to be downloaded individually by customers from their mobile app store. Organizations could also partner with “heyy,” and launch the app in their organizations for their employees to use. The employees could make use of the array of services provided by heyy, from self-help guides and self-evaluation of their mental health to chat-based interactions with helpers (counsellors), and could also schedule appointments with therapists recommended by heyy,. After launching with over seven partner organizations, the analysts at heyy, discovered a pattern of customer usage of heyy.

Although the enterprise users were logging in to the heyy, app during the launch in organizations, over a period, the usage rate would gradually decline over the next months of launching. The team at heyy, was perplexed by this reduction in usage by employees. Ankit discussed the same with his team, and they came up with innovative suggestions to amplify adoption rates. However, the reason for the decline in usage had to be identified before a viable solution could be provided.

Research experts on mental health in India and renowned psychiatrists had discovered that not many open discussions on mental health took place in Indian workplace settings. This coupled with employees’ fear of privacy invasion could deter their usage of mental health interventions available to them. In Indian workplaces, accepting the fact that one was stressed/anxious/depressed or had any kind of myriad mental health issues had been seen as a sign of incapability. This, coupled with the fear of judgement, stopped employees from addressing or even seeking help for mental health issues in their workplaces. Quoting a Gen Z employee who said – “I feel like if I say out aloud that I am tired or stressed, it might make me feel like an untrained or unfit employee. What will the manager think of me? Will she think that I need more time to settle down on the job, will that affect my appraisal?”. Another said – “I feel like if I mentioned out aloud that I need help with my anxiety, it might lead to office gossip that something is not right with me. So instead of help, I might be made fun of like the one time a colleague fainted, and we kept making fun of him for many weeks”. Mondal and Mehra (2022) corroborated this in their research, where their study stressed on the need for mental health at corporate workplaces to move from stigma to awareness and then acceptance. This might be one of the reasons for the low adoption of heyy, by its enterprise customers. Other reasons could be:

  • fear of judgement from colleagues;

  • fear that it might be associated with low job performance;

  • negative perception about mental health; and

  • lack of visible acceptance in conversations with peers.

Understanding challenges ahead

The business dilemma faced by heyy, was how to reengineer their B2B segment. When asked about heyy,’s first enterprise customers, Ankit said – “The first enterprise customers at heyy, consisted of start-ups, led by progressive founders, young founders in the millennial/Gen-Z era who understood the importance of mental health” (April 2023). The disparity in adoption rates of end-customers at the B2B segment when compared with the B2C segment had been a challenge to contend with. Ankit explored the potential reasons, and a few plausible causes emerged:

  • “Understanding companies – ideally high-stress low-growth verticals – like consultancy and advertising – should lap up mental health services. However, we came to know otherwise;

  • Discretionary spending – for a lot of businesses, mental health care is not a priority spending for employees;

  • Decision-making happens during insurance selling to businesses – most businesses take mental health care as an add-on to insurance (which is a de-facto requirement for businesses for its employees). So, a direct sale route did not result in high conversions; and

  • Paying ability – Most of the Indian companies would pay less than $1 per employee per year” (April 2023).

To explore these insights further and turn them into effective business strategies that could improve their B2B adoption, John Mullins’s seven-domains model was suggested (Mullins, 2017). This seven-domains model assisted business owners and entrepreneurs to understand whether their business idea was marketable and commercially viable. The seven domains in the Mullins model provided multiple perspectives on the various aspects of the industry, the market and the organization itself. This helped the leadership team in exploring the attractiveness and underlying business potential of the B2B segment. Investigating the macro-level attractiveness of the market trends gave a very bolstering look. This positive outlook has been attributed to the growing employee workforce coupled with organizations looking towards introducing mental health breaks (Deloitte, 2021). Business tools such as PEST analysis, with a critical view of political, economic, social and technological issues of the market, would aid in answering whether the market was a viable option to invest in or not.

Perceiving the mental health-care potential market at a micro level, the target market segment would majorly be the Gen Z and millennials, who form the majority of the workforce. Recent research findings fortified the fact that they gave more importance to mental health care than previous generations (Mahapatra et al., 2022). Studies had identified that young adults and women occupied a significant population who were accessing mental health care through smartphone-based applications (Nauert, 2021). Reimagining marketing tactics and improving understanding of this target market segment were vital.

The macro-level outlook at the industry attractiveness level had been positive, as mental health care had been recently viewed as one of the top health-care concerns by organizations since the pandemic (Deloitte, 2021). Porter’s five forces model would help in understanding the penetrating power of the mental health-care industry. This framework had been used consistently over the years by organizations when venturing into new business domains and to understand market dynamics. The five forces mentioned by Porter were as follows:

  1. supplier power – in this scenario would be the supporting therapists and allied mental health professionals supporting the applications;

  2. buyer power – would be the consumers – both enterprise and direct – who are the target users of the mental health-care applications;

  3. the threat of new entry – would help analyse the competitive landscape, where even though international players such as Calm, Headspace, Bettertalk, etc., occupy a bigger market share, new mental health-care interventions were still emerging in the market (Forbes, 2023);

  4. substitute products would be the alternative sources of mental health care available in the market – therapists, psychiatrists, mental health clinics, etc.; and

  5. competitive landscape – though the competition was high, there was still market to be covered and new market segments left to be explored (Forbes, 2023).

Analysing Porter’s five forces would provide a comprehensive outlook on the macro-level industry attractiveness.

For heyy, to achieve a significant competitive advantage in the industry, it must build upon its core competencies with expert partners. The core competencies that made heyy, unique were the 24/7 availability of helper space and the presence of renowned coaches, therapists and psychiatrists with whom sessions could be booked for one-on-one expert help.

The crux of this was the team at heyy, – the top leadership had been passionately working towards not the profits but the mental well-being of their partner organizations. The core team that consisted of Ankit, Mahima and Urvashi were equally committed to heyy,’s vision – “affordable mental health care for all”.

Exploring their B2B model through the lens of the “John Mullins” seven-domains model provided new insights on increasing the adoption of “heyy,” by its enterprise customers. The enterprise customers’ self-evaluation of stress levels when they started using the heyy, app would usually be communicated to the organization and the employees in a typical town hall meeting. Organizations were then provided with a wide range of intervention programmes and workshops curated specifically for the employees. These series of workshops and programmes involved employees navigating their stress and burnout levels through stress management and mindfulness workshops. When the low adoption levels were reduced, this impacted the quantity of data collected on employee stress levels. This in turn would prevent client organizations who wanted to help their employees manage their workplace stress. Committed organizations concerned about their employees’ mental health would thus not be able to implement any intervention programmes, which would in turn lead to undiagnosed issues and repressed workplace stress. Apart from suffering due negative health issues, disengaged employees on a larger scale, transfer their negative emotions to their colleagues thus causing unhealthy work environment. A conducive organizational climate where mental well-being was promoted would be paramount for employee well-being and, ultimately, organizational success. Dr Mahima Sahi (the chief psychologist at heyy,) had a judicious view on the need for mental health care among employees.

In one of the interviews, she shared her thoughts on why Indian workplaces needed mental health awareness – “Mental health has the potential to be the next pandemic in workplaces. With 1 in 3 Asian employees undergoing burnout at the workplaces post-pandemic (McKinsey Survey 2022) and that having a direct impact on productivity, there is a high need to induce ‘awareness’ about workplace mental health in Indian workplaces and prevent mental health concerns before they take an upswing” (October 2022).

After observing the trend of lowered adoption rates for the past few months amongst the enterprise customers, Ankit and his core team that consisted of Mahima (chief psychologist), Sekhar (marketing head) and Urvashi (head helper and expert ecosystem) brainstormed a few ideas. John Mullins’s seven-domains model had been adopted to evaluate the attractiveness of the B2B domain at heyy,.

Mahima proposed onsite awareness road shows at each of the client’s premises. This strategy was inspired by the Attention, Interest, Desire, Action and Satisfaction theory of selling to the customers (Song et al., 2012) – understanding the whole “customer-engagement cycle”. This would be getting an insight into what might capture customers’ attention, hold their interest levels and make conscious business decisions to spark a desire in them to use the product, leading the customers to adopt the product/service and finally investigating the factors that might cause customer satisfaction in sustained product/service usage. Applying the concepts of this theory led Mahima to recommend workshops as the first step in gaining customer insights. These would include a series of awareness workshops at the client organizations, instead of virtual ones. The team hoped that meeting the enterprise customers directly would improve customer engagement and help address any security or privacy concerns. The brief interactive sessions would be designed to provide a comprehensive outlook on mental health, the need for public acceptance and how it is universally experienced by all. The team hoped that this would make a huge leeway in removing the stigma around mental health in workplaces.

Customer engagement while using mobile apps was a definite challenge commonly encountered by many mobile applications (Thakur, 2019). The amount of time an average customer spent on a health-care/fitness mobile app was dismally low when compared with the time spent on social media apps (McLean & Wilson, 2019). Sekhar suggested incorporating gamification elements in the app’s design layout. Gaming always excited users. The gamification idea would involve elements such as reward points to access features of the app – finishing simple tasks like taking tests on stress levels, reading self-help tips, etc.

This would encourage users to explore the app and motivate them to use it more. Simple activities such as breathing aid exercises, already in the app, could be modified to look like little challenges, on completion of which, users would gain reward points. Accumulation of certain reward points could be redeemed as gift vouchers or similar incentives that would encourage corporate customers to increase “heyy,” usage.

Urvashi recommended changes to how the helper space had been designed. The initially designed protocol was when the chat space would be initiated by the user. Once the conversation was completed and the user’s mental health queries were addressed, the chat would close. The helpers would periodically check on these users to ensure their psychological well-being. Urvashi suggested introducing proactive initial messages from the helpers to users who log in to the app. The helpers’ space would be always available for the users. This would encourage hesitant customers to converse with helpers, instead of initiating conversations with helpers. These reticent customers might otherwise not be ready to start chat sessions. This would be one way of ensuring online customers stay on the app for a few more minutes and explore further options, which they might not be fully aware of initially.

Armed with these ideas, the “heyy,” team had to evaluate the logistics of turning one or more of these ideas into sustainable business strategies. Although the team had favourably viewed all the ideas, each idea came with its own set of challenges that had to be addressed before implementing them. The onsite programmes at each of the client premises seemed viable but would involve complex planning and execution both from heyy, and from each of the client organizations. The planning had to involve convincing the top management of the importance of conducting these workshops at the client workplaces. After the consent of the management, fixing the date and designing a programme would take elaborate planning from the team. The cost of conducting these sessions at each of the client locations would also be expensive for heyy,.

However, its impact was projected to be the highest and guaranteed to yield maximum results. Several research studies supported that introducing gamification to mental health technological services such as mobile applications improved user engagement (Cheng, 2020; Cheng et al., 2019). Proactive gaming strategies that encouraged users to continuously engage with the application had been replicated in other mental health intervention technologies by researchers. These studies found that such gaming interventions had led to reduced attrition rates. Some of the team members debated that having gaming elements would take away the innate nature of the app – to provide mental health assistance, and it was not intended to be an entertainment tool for the users. Still, introducing the right mix of gaming features would enable customers to set goals for themselves, motivate them to achieve those goals through the reward system and help them track their progress. If the team did plan to go for this strategy, this might help in improving adoption rates when implemented at heyy,. The UX/UI design team at heyy, had to completely change the design features of the heyy, app to execute this. The technical challenges of doing the same had to be discussed and a road map was chartered out to discuss the potential implications of changing the app layout.

The third option discussed was revolutionizing customer interaction, especially the way helpers interacted with the users. There would be potential downsides to such proactive initiation of conversations with the customers. Human behaviour and attitude were so varied that a potential solution to address all users might not be viable. Not all users would want someone to poke conversations at them when they open the app, and this might even deter someone from using heyy, in the future. However, there would still be a possibility that some percentage of users would respond positively to the helper chat initiations. This strategy had a mixed probability of being a success when implemented.

The team at heyy, had to reach a consensus about these business solutions, and these were just a few of the opportunities available in capturing B2C end-consumers. Osterwalder’s business canvas model provided the leadership team to inspect the value proposition of their B2B business model and gain awareness of potential trade-offs (Osterwalder & Euchner, 2019). The various dimensions of this model would be:

  • understanding the USP of the unique mental health care offered at heyy, – this would be the unique helper space available and the revitalized UX/UI interface;

  • the detailed infrastructure that was at heyy,’s disposal including resources, unique services and partner alliances – the network of therapists and psychiatrists partnering with heyy,;

  • critically evaluating the existing cost structure, including the planned promotional events planned for B2B clientele;

  • realizing that the niche customer segment and the potential relationship with the customers would be more co-creation of mental well-being than a transactional relationship; and

  • exploring the revenue streams available – revamping the subscription-based services at heyy, would support in scaling up the model and also diversifying the revenue options.

Ankit was now at a crossroads in choosing the right strategy and identifying more marketing tactics to uphaul the adoption rates of his enterprise customers. What could be done at heyy, to ensure increased success with its B2B clientele?

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USA Today. (2022). More adults received mental health treatment over the past two years. USA Today. Retrieved from www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2022/09/18/more-adults-received-mental-health-treatment-over-past-two-years/10369715002/

WE Forum. (2021). World Economic Forum, Mental Health – ‘Why Indians are finding it harder to be happy’. Retrieved from www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/09/india-mental-health-pandemicdigitization/

Further reading

Agarwal, R. (2022). Understanding the mental landscape in India. Blume, health care report. Retrieved from https://blume.vc/reports/understanding-the-mental-health-landscape-in-india (accessed 22 October 2022).

Top mental health-care applications

Applications Features
HeadSpace User-friendly interface and extensive content library
Calm Wide range of calming exercises, soothing audio content
BetterHelp Teletherapy space, with connectivity to professional help
Talkspace Teletherapy space, commitment to privacy
Sanvello Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), mood therapy

Source:

Data from CNET Market Research, 2023 (Leamey, 2023)

Acknowledgements

Disclaimer. This case is written solely for educational purposes and is not intended to represent successful or unsuccessful managerial decision-making. The authors may have disguised names; financial and other recognisable information to protect confidentiality.

Corresponding author

Divya S. can be contacted at: divya.s@vit.ac.in

About the authors

Divya S. is based at the Centre for Advanced Data Science, Vellore Institute of Technology – Chennai Campus, Chennai, India.

Mahima Sahi is Chief Psychologist, heyy PTE Ltd, Singapore.

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