'Ahona: Your Friend Indeed', a Bangladeshi early-stage startup that aims to provide a psychological support platform has been accepted to the 10th edition of the prestigious Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, to be held in Silicon Valley in April 2024. By providing psychological counseling sessions for free, Ahona aims to help enhance accessibility of mental health support in Bangladesh. In the previous years, the bootcamp for early-stage/idea-stage startups raised more than US$ 50 million in funding.
The idea for this startup was born a few years back when Nafiz Basher, the founder of Ahona, while going through some difficult stages, felt the need for psychological counseling yet refrained from it upon discovering the high expenses that come with it.
"Not too long ago, I used to cry everyday. I desperately needed professional help, but the expenses that came with a standard therapy weren't financially feasible. But thousands just like me needed help, even if it was just listening to us," says Nafiz.
Since then, Nafiz Basher had ideated a different approach to psychological counseling. Now in his second-year studying at the Department of Public Administration at Dhaka University, he has founded 'Ahona: Your Friend Indeed', a pay-as-you can service model psychological support platform that aims to benefit people and early-career psychologists.
The platform, at its core, functions by providing people the option to book and schedule online counseling sessions for free, where graduating psychology students and early-career psychologists are present. These volunteering psychologists try to listen and help with their knowledge. However, in cases where help wasn’t sufficient, the people are then referred to professional psychologists. These medical professionals are in agreement with Ahona to charge significantly less than other places.
Upon being launched three weeks ago, the startup was met with enormous responses and acknowledgement. In these three weeks, more than 200 sessions were booked by individuals all across the country for psychological help- and 11 graduating students and alumni of the Department of Psychology at Dhaka University had volunteered to conduct these sessions, and five professional psychologists had opted in an agreement.
Nafiz remarked, "When Ahona was launched, I didn't think many people were going to register. Now, we're at a stage where we're conducting nine sessions per day."
Recently, the startup had been accepted into the Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, a bootcamp for early-stage/idea-stage startups backed by SeedSpark at Stanford Graduate School of Business. The 10th edition of it will be held at Silicon Valley, the heart of technological advancement in the world. 10 Minute School, another startup from Bangladesh had been a participant of this in 2022.
Future plans for Ahona carry ambition. Given its session demand, it is currently focusing on sustaining the quality of these sessions, diversifying and reaching a broader age range of the demographic and ensuring affordability. It also has future plans to introduce AI technology for assistance.
The writer is a student of 11th grade at Saint Joseph Higher Secondary School, Dhaka.
samin.shahan@gmail.com