Get to know the Talking.id Counseling Platform and its Mission to Improve Mental Health in Indonesia

Technology has a significant role in connecting people in different parts of the world. Their presence is also used by them to develop a variety of digital services whose functions are now increasingly broad, ranging from financial services, shopping, education, to mental health.

Founder & CEO of Kontakkan.id Andreas Handani believes that anyone has the right to own good mental health. Even for modern people who have sufficient needs for clothing, food, and shelter, it is possible that their mental health needs have been met.

Based on data from Basic Health Research (Riskesdas) in 2018, as many as 12 million Indonesians aged over 15 years experienced depression, and 19 million people over 15 years experienced mental and emotional disorders. This number has the potential to increase, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, when people's space for movement is limited.

On a global scale, the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2017 reported that more than 200 million people (3,6% of the population) suffer from anxiety. Meanwhile, the number of people with depression reached 322 million people (4,4% of the population), almost half of whom came from Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific.

DailySocial.id the opportunity to know more about the online counseling platform talk.id which was founded by Andreas Handani and his future visions and missions.

Encouraging mental health with counseling services

When he founded Kontakkan.id, Andreas said that the initial idea for this service was born from a song lyric that alludes to the importance of expressing the problems faced. Psychologically, he considers that expressing the problem is very useful to find the solution steps.

In addition, he sees that services to accommodate mental health needs have not been well developed in Indonesia. "There is no place that really functions as an ecosystem that can combine psychologists and the psychological needs of the Indonesian people in a synergistic manner. It is a massive mess for us as a modern society," he said.

Andreas admits that he has no educational background and a career as a psychologist. Even before this, he had a career as a freelance copywriter and marketing consultant of startups fintech. However, Andreas admits that psychology helped his life in making changes and inspired him to develop a counseling platform online.

For information, Talk.id is a platform that provides counseling services online. Its mission is to become an ecosystem of quality mental health services at an affordable cost for everyone in Indonesia.

Talk was founded in March 2020 and already has 11 people on its team. In the early days, counseling services online Talk about can only be accessed on the website with an initial fee of IDR 149 thousand per session. Currently, the cost per session starts from IDR 189 thousand. Service counseling available online, namely individuals and couples.

Now, users can schedule online counseling sessions via the Google Play Store and Apps Store in less than 5 minutes. "Compare to traditional face-to-face counseling where the process can take days or even weeks. I think this improvement which is quite drastic, yes, in terms of convenience for user," he added.

apart online, Talk.id also offers face-to-face counseling services for individuals and couples through Talking House. This facility makes it easier for Speakers (as discussed by the users of Talk.id) to meet face-to-face with the counselor of their choice. Users can also schedule counseling sessions directly there.

Currently, Talk.id has 26 active counselor partners. According to Andreas, he handled the counselor curation process with the Head of Counseling Operations Mario Albert. Anyone can apply to join as a partner as long as they have a Psychologist Practice License (SIPP).  

East Ventures investment and business plan

On this occasion, Andreas also revealed that the Talk.id platform has obtained initial funding (pre seed) from East Ventures with an undisclosed amount. His party is also discussing with several other investors to accelerate the development plan of Talk.id into an optimal mental health service ecosystem in Indonesia.

His party has a vision to build a quality, affordable service ecosystem, and is equipped with related content, such as: journaling and meditation. Through this platform, he has a vision to encourage Indonesian people to be more open to problems, validate emotions, and appreciate the importance of talking about problems, not letting them go.

"Right now, we are focused on develop an ecosystem of quality, complete, and affordable mental health services. There are three main areas of our development, namely applications, content, and increasing the number of counselors and counseling services," he said.

Startup Studio program participation

In addition to seeking access to capital, Talk.id also participates in the incubation program Startup Studio facilitated by the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo). Last September, Talk.id was selected as one of the participants who passed this Batch III.

According to Andreas, one of the main reasons for joining this program is to get assistance and lessons in developing startups. He acknowledged that independent product development would take a long time.

"There are many people who understand business development better, especially in the technology startup industry. [This participation can help our mission to make Indonesian people more mentally healthy," he said.

There are several interesting lessons that he learned from this program, including bringing together business goals with market reality, how to reach profit without forgetting the social mission, the way to product-market fit, to the importance tracking data and cohort metrics to achieve user retention rate optimal yang.