Talking helped a mental health app get off ground
LOS ANGELES: A chance meeting on a start-up training scheme has led to a mental health app securing £4.4 million in funding, prompting its founder to extol the virtues of networking.
Joel Gujral, who set up Myndup in 2020, said he realised the importance of talking about his ideas to as many people as possible when he randomly met two people who went on to become significant investors.
He met the first, James Lock, a managing director at the asset manager Blackstone, in late 2019 on a enterprise development programme organised by the Centre for Entrepreneurs charity.
His second investor came from a conversation with an analyst who was attending a new business initiative supported by the London Stock Exchange in December 2020. “He liked the business and said he wanted to introduce me to his boss at a venture capital firm. After a few further conversations I was introduced to the head of the firm, who said they wanted to invest. We were not raising institutional investment at that point so he invested personally.” That person was Stephane Mardel, who founded the tech investor Systemanova.
Gujral, 28, came up with the idea for the business after suffering depression while working at the accountancy firm RSM. He sought support from first a counsellor and then a life coach. The latter opened his eyes to the range of support that he thought should be made available to employees.
He left RSM to pursue his idea for an employee benefit scheme. It launched in 2020 and so far has 60 practitioners on its books, with a further 12,000 in its “network” that are vetted and brought on as and when they are needed.
He said the company achieved a 12 per cent net profit margin in its first year, before raising £300,000 from angel investors and ramping up its growth rate. It does not disclose its revenues but Gujral said it was planning to return to profitability in 2024.