India-based Wysa announced a USD $5.5 million Series A round of venture capital. This brings its total raised to $9.4 million.
Conversation interfaces are empowering communication and engagement with employees at every stage of the employee experience. Wysa brings that experience to employee mental wellness with its AI-powered evidence-based cognitive-behavioral techniques (CBT).
Wysa positions itself as an employee assistance program (EAP) with a focus on mental wellness.
Many large employers have some combination of mindfulness support and Employee Assistance Programs (EAP). However, it is hard to tell if this is helping employees, and even harder to tailor this to any specific concerns they may have, especially during the pandemic. Wysa customizes its support to employee needs, fits around existing resources, and gives employees complete anonymity as they work through their issues. In addition, for those who want to work through specific issues, Wysa offers daily support from a dedicated wellbeing coach. For organizations, Wysa maintains employee anonymity yet gives real-time population-level insights and benchmarks related to their employees’ mental wellbeing. It also broadens the base of people who access EAP, by engaging them early and guiding them to EAP resources when self-care is not enough. For large organizations, such as Accenture and Aetna International, Wysa’s solution is unique in its ability to integrate with their existing resources. This year, as Accenture rolled out Wysa to 500,000 employees across 53 countries, wellbeing managers were able to access insights for each country and create custom pathways to in-country EAP and wellness resources.
From Wysa’s funding announcement
In 2020 the benefits HR tech category saw $258 million of VC invested globally. The wellness category saw $485 million.