How Richa Singh built YourDOST to make asking for help normal

Richa Singh has spoken publicly about losing a peer to suicide during her engineering years, a loss that crystallised the question behind YourDOST: in a country where mental health is heavily stigmatised, who does a person actually talk to before it becomes a crisis? The company is best understood as a long attempt to make “before” a viable business, not just a noble one.

The origin is the credibility

The decisive context is one she has spoken about openly: the impact of a peer’s death during her time at IIT Guwahati. In most founder stories the personal anecdote is decoration; here it is structurally load-bearing. Mental health is a trust-scarce category where users and institutional buyers are rightly wary of anyone monetising distress, and a founder whose mission demonstrably comes from lived loss, not a market-size slide, is precisely what earns the benefit of the doubt. The origin story is not marketing; it is the company’s first and most durable asset.

Why the IIT campus matters twice

She is an engineering graduate of IIT Guwahati, a credential frequently cited, but it matters as explanation, not prestige. The high-density, high-stress campus is both where she saw the problem first-hand and where YourDOST found its earliest wedge: campuses are environments where the need is acute, the population is concentrated, and, critically, an institution can be the payer rather than the stigmatised individual. The founder’s background and the company’s first market are literally the same place, which is why the early product fit was unusually tight.

Mission credibility as the only available edge

YourDOST was an early venture, co-founded with Puneet Manuja, not the output of a long corporate career, and the founding insight came from lived experience rather than market analysis. That shaped the model by elimination: with no enterprise-sales pedigree to lean on, the company had to win on mission credibility and clinical quality. In a stigma-heavy category that is not a handicap; it is exactly what the market rewards, because trust is the product and it cannot be bought with a sales motion.

Why YourDOST existed

The gap was structural. India had crisis-stage psychiatry and almost nothing in front of it, no normalised, accessible, early emotional support for the long period before a problem becomes clinical, especially for students and employees. YourDOST was built as an online platform connecting people to counsellors and psychologists at that earlier stage, deliberately reframing support as something ordinary and preventive rather than something reserved for acute illness. The hard part of that reframing is not technology; it is permission, making it socially and economically acceptable to ask for help early.

The real problem was the economics, not the product

Two reinforcing forces make Indian mental health one of the hardest consumer categories anywhere: deep stigma suppresses demand, and even where demand exists individual willingness-to-pay is low, so a pure B2C model is structurally fragile no matter how good the product. The core challenge was therefore economic, not clinical: build trust at scale while finding a payer who could fund quality counselling without pricing out exactly the people who needed it most. The company’s defining decision is the answer to that question.

Changing the payer: the B2B turn

YourDOST raised early venture funding and built a substantial revenue base through B2B, corporate employee-wellness and campus/institutional programmes, while running a consumer layer alongside. The strategic significance is easy to under-rate: B2B did not merely add a revenue line, it solved the category’s fundamental flaw by changing who pays. An employer or institution funding access removes the stigma-at-the-paywall problem entirely, which is what makes accessible early support financially viable at all. We do not print round or revenue figures the public record does not consistently support; the durable point is the payer architecture, not a number.

YourDOST startup timeline

• ~2014–2015, YourDOST founded by Richa Singh and Puneet Manuja, initially campus-focused.
• Following years, Raises early venture funding; expands into corporate employee-wellness programmes.
• Later, Scales B2B institutional and campus partnerships as the primary revenue engine.

YourDOST business model

An emotional-wellness platform connecting users to counsellors, monetised primarily through B2B contracts, corporate employee-assistance and campus/institutional wellness programmes, with a consumer layer alongside. The B2B core is not a monetisation convenience; it is the mechanism that lets the platform offer accessible support without depending on individuals overcoming stigma at a paywall.

YourDOST competitors

In Indian digital mental health it operates near InnerHour/Amaha, Wysa, Lissun, Mindhouse and other emotional-wellness and EAP providers. The competitive battleground is less the app than the enterprise and campus channel and clinical credibility, whoever institutions trust as their wellness partner controls distribution, which is why YourDOST anchors there rather than fighting for individual consumers.

Growth strategy

Three deliberate choices: change the payer, sell to employers and institutions rather than fight individual stigma at checkout; anchor in campuses, where need is acute, density is high and trust compounds into later corporate relationships; and treat clinical quality as the brand, since in a low-trust category credibility is the only durable moat.

What Richa Singh’s story teaches Indian founders

That in a stigma-and-affordability-constrained category, the right move is often to change the payer, not the price, a B2B model can fund a B2C mission. Mission clarity from lived experience is what makes that credible to institutional buyers.

Frequently asked questions about Richa Singh

Who is Richa Singh?

Richa Singh is an Indian entrepreneur and co-founder of YourDOST, an online emotional-wellness and mental-health platform. An IIT Guwahati graduate, she built YourDOST with Puneet Manuja after a peer’s suicide during her campus years shaped the mission.

What is Richa Singh’s net worth?

This is a privately held company, so there is no disclosed valuation or public net-worth figure; the founder’s stake is a private holding rather than a listed, market-priced one.

What does YourDOST do?

YourDOST connects people to counsellors and psychologists for early emotional support, monetised primarily through corporate and institutional wellness contracts, with a consumer layer alongside.

What can founders learn from Richa Singh?

That changing the payer (employers, institutions) can fund a mission individuals won’t pay for directly, and that lived-experience mission clarity is what makes a B2B sale credible.

More founder journeys: women founders in health · first-generation women founders · women founders in Bengaluru.