When Pooja Srinivasa Raja was a teenager, she was bullied and battled body shaming and body image issues because of her height (she’s about 6 feet tall!). As a consequence, she suffered from depression, anxiety and bulimia. Outwardly, she appeared fine. Internally, it was a dark and hard struggle for her. Back in the day, she didn’t know what she was going through, because discussing mental health wasn’t normal. She got through those years with the help of her family and friends.
Later, when she got married young and had a child, she suffered from post-partum depression and battled suicidal thoughts. This time, she decided to reach out for professional help not just for her well-being, but for the sake of her daughter
‘At the Love Hope Company, we aim to provide a lot of love and hope to everyone through different forms of mental health services, which are all provided by extremely trained and highly experienced professionals. When I was going through my own set of mental illnesses, it was hard for me to first accept that I needed help, but it was even harder to find the right space to go and reach out for help.
Through this journey and my experiences, I understood that there were a lot of small difficulties, even for people who were open to getting help. That was the moment when I decided to bridge all those gaps and set up a space where people could reach out for help to take care of their mental health.’
Hailing from a business background, it is no surprise that Pooja has always been entrepreneurial. She started the Love Hope Company earlier this year but has been running an NGO called Transformind Foundation for the past four years, which has been creating and spreading awareness on mental health, trying to destigmatise all the taboos around it. ‘Through the Love Hope Company, I aim to provide high-quality mental health services for anyone and everyone. It's a safe space. It's a space where you will all feel seen, heard, loved and understood.’
She adds, ‘We are an LGBTQ-friendly space. We provide one-to-one therapy services for everyone. We have individual counselling, family counselling, counselling for kids, relationships and couples.
We also have a concept called the Love Hope Circle, where we offer group sessions. And then we have EITA, which focuses on developing Emotional Intelligence for kids between 4-14, using various art forms. It is driven by an experienced child psychologist with 30 years of experience.”
With the research the brand has conducted so far, Pooja says with a fair degree of certainty that there aren't any other companies or any brands that provide these niche quality services in the country. ‘One of the biggest fears that I have is, people are not used to spending money to safeguard their mental health. It's still normal for someone to go to a hospital for a health checkup and medication, but they don’t invest in their mental health. In this space, we offer the best infrastructure with the best team, but as affordably as possible. Anyone from any financial background can try and get help for their mental health.’
She does acknowledge that running a start-up, especially a business on mental wellness, where there aren't many other brands in the same space, every single day is a learning. But she’s optimistic when she hears feedback from clients who have visited the space and benefited. ‘Based on the statistics conducted over the past two years, we've realised that one in five people in Tamil Nadu are going through some form of mental health issues, but there aren't many healthcare providers or opportunities for them to reach out to for help or awareness. Considering the Chennai city size, we feel at least 10 per cent or 20 per cent of the population will be able to reach out for help. That was the market research that we did to start the Love Hope Company. I started it with every bit of my savings, entirely on my own, but I am looking for seed funding and other funding opportunities. I want to establish this as a mental wellness service provider brand throughout the country eventually.’
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