Getting to Know Ami and How to Build Mental Health for Startup Employees

Until now, mental health become a problem that has not been fully resolved, both at the global and national levels. The condition has been worsened since the Covid-19 pandemic which caused the community's economy to deteriorate, which directly affected life, as well as mentality in dealing with the situation during the pandemic.

Moreover, the issue of mental health is still a taboo for the people of Indonesia. Stigma against people with mental health disorders in Indonesia is still very strong. The 2018 Basic Health Research (Riskerdas) shows that more than 19 million people over the age of 15 experience mental and emotional disorders, and more than 12 million people over the age of 15 experience depression.

This data shows that this country has not been able to solve mental health problems properly. But unfortunately, this issue becomes a stigma that can have a negative impact on sufferers, for example, discrimination and being ostracized from the community which is feared to hinder the healing and recovery of mental health sufferers.

The above facts are also supported by the findings Google Trends. In the global market, search trends "how to maintain mental health" is said to have increased higher this year than the previous year.

This challenge is interesting to be solved by the private sector. Justin Kim and Beknazar Abdikamalov are the people behind the founding of "Ami", a platform provider startup mental wellness with a mission to make mental health care more accessible to overworked and stressed workers in Asia.

In a joint interview DailySocial.id, Kim admitted that both he and Abdikamalov were too familiar with the company's fast-paced culture. Kim was previously an owner at Viva Republica, owned by Korean billionaire Lee Seung-gun, who operated it super app Toss finances, while his partner works as a software engineer from Amazon.

“Everyone at Ami has spent years in a fast-paced workplace and experienced firsthand what it's like to neglect our emotional health. Ami is designed to be the employee well-being resource we've always wanted. We are now working with companies to make 1:1 mental health training accessible to employees everywhere,” explained Kim.

Amy's solution

Ami works as platform online which matches employees with mental health coaches. Users can actually call them, without needing to make an appointment weeks in advance, to talk about their daily stresses via the WhatsApp platform. This step is intended to make talking about mental health care as easy as checking the weather and as comfortable as talking to friends.

Kim continued, there were three main characteristics of Ami's experience. First, Ami resonates with the average user because they provide lightweight training designed for everyday people and employees. “We are not a clinical counseling service that only serves individuals who are diagnosed and therefore seeking treatment.”

Secondly, users enjoy a 1:1 interactive experience with coaches handpicked from Ami's diverse team to suit them, making the experience far more engaging and bespoke than existing solutions in the industry. Finally, coaching is offered in an accessible, on-demand manner.

“Users at our partner companies can enjoy a unique experience seamless pattern on our app platform, connect with a coach in less than a minute. After that, they can continue to enjoy unlimited and flexible access to Ami's training sessions.”

For companies, the impact of implementing this concept is claimed to be able to increase adoption 10 times higher than conventional solutions, at a lower cost.

In a period of five months, Kim explained further, his party has built a strong community of clients and partners throughout Asia Pacific. This positive start makes him and his team believe that there are bright prospects for raising literacy regarding mental health.

All of Ami's coaches are handpicked and work with Ami internally. The company is committed to developing the most diverse and powerful team of coaches in Asia -regardless of background- all Ami users will be matched with the appropriate coach profile for their needs.

“Our main focus continues to be ensuring that our users have a great training experience and enabling them to become natural advocates and spread the word to peers. We have a lot of user support from the startup community in Asia, especially from companies with a more value-oriented millennial demographic.”

The mental health industry and Ami's plan

Ami itself is based in Singapore and is starting to expand to Jakarta. These two locations were chosen because they have a startup base with fast growth. Moreover, the majority of employees are young and tend to be more open about health and emotional well-being.

According to Kim, working at a startup tends to get stressful more quickly because it always requires very high growth. Meanwhile, retaining top talent is a growing priority for startups. Even though the stigma surrounding mental health in Asia is still very real, the startup's response to the solutions Ami offers has been very positive.

They added Ami as a core part of their employee benefits package, and their employees openly embrace and proactively invest in mental health coaching. “Covid-19 has helped accelerate this. Now is the perfect time that mental health is a very current conversation for Asian societies and workplaces now, and it is also on the agenda of most HR teams.”

Kim added, “mental health” has become a buzzword. These conditions are very important in providing authentic and clear value as to what added value Ami provides. “We educate by showing that mental health is relevant for everyone throughout the life cycle, not just for individuals seeking clinical help, or for stressful situations after an incident.”

“Mental wellbeing and resilience can be fostered through your daily lifestyle, knowing how to pause and reset, so you can go further. At Ami, we believe coaching can be a transformative experience that facilitates this effectively. "Humans are basically social creatures who want human relationships," he continued.

Kim said that during this year the company will expand its coverage to Asia. For him, Asia is home to some of the most employed countries in the world. The average person in South Korea, for example, worked 1.908 hours in 2020, the fourth most among developed countries, according to data collected by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By comparison, the average person in the US worked 1.767 hours that same year.

Meanwhile in Japan, long working hours are so rampant that they are a cause of death - called "karoshi” in Japanese. This fact has been legally recognized as a cause of death since the 1980s. Conditions that are not much different also occur in China.

“Workers in Asia are some of the most stressed in the world with poor access to stress management resources. However, regardless of geography, what we do will be relevant and important to any organization that employs human employees, not robots. We welcome connecting with any companies globally who might want to know more about what we do.”

He is also optimistic about Ami's opportunities in Indonesia. The reason is that the work culture in this country reflects fast economic growth. When translated further, this leads to increased intensity and stress in most workplaces. Along with this, a new generation of employees has emerged who have become more values-oriented than their predecessors, and seek a truly holistic, authentic and balanced work-life environment.

“We believe that Ami is well positioned to help employers and employees navigate this balance. Last but not least, many of our Indonesian users speak Bahasa and have given high praise to Ami's experience in being able to meet multi-lingual, multi-cultural demands. We work hard hand in hand with coaches to provide socio-culturally relevant experiences for all our clients.”

Several local startups that have partnered with Ami include HappyFresh, Modalku, and Sampingan.

Currently, Ami has been supported with funding of $4 million (more than 57 billion Rupiah. This round was led by the New Product Experimentation Team, investing arm from Meta. This investment from Meta marks its initial debut in Asia Pacific. Then, followed by Collaborative Fund, Goodwater Capital, Strong Ventures, January Capital, and Wisdom Ventures.

Furthermore, other investors who participated also came from angel investors. The names are the three co-founders of Modalku (Reynold Wijaya, Kelvin Teo, Koh Meng Wong), Maudy Ayunda, Chinmay Chauhan (BukuWarung), MX Kuok (K3 Ventures), Steven Lee (SV Angel), Rajesh Venkatesh (Nium), and others.