Justin Kim, cofounder and CEO of Ami.
COURTESY OF JUSTIN KIM
After operating at two fast-growing startups in South Korea, Justin Kim, a Forbes 30 Underneath 30 Asia alum from 2020, introduced his personal startup, known as Ami, that targets to make psychological healthcare extra available for the overworked and stressed-out employees in Asia.
Kim, at the side of cofounder Beknazar Abdikamalov, introduced Ami in beta mode previous this month. Kim, who serves as CEO, used to be maximum not too long ago a product proprietor at Korean billionaire Lee Seung-gun‘s Viva Republica, which operates the finance superapp Toss, whilst Abdikamalov, CTO, used to be a device engineer at Amazon. The 2 prior to now labored in combination at Miso, a Seoul-based house services and products platform sponsored by way of famed Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator (which nurtured startups equivalent to Airbnb, Coinbase and DoorDash) and an honoree of ultimate yr’s Forbes Asia 100 to Watch.
Ami raised $1 million in pre-seed investment from mission capital corporations Goodwater Capital (which has sponsored Kakao, Coupang and Viva Republica), Robust Ventures (Miso and Korbit, South Korea’s first cryptocurrency change), January Capital and Collaborative Fund. A lot of notable angel buyers additionally participated within the spherical, together with Khosla Ventures running spouse Irene Au and her husband, Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice chairman of product.
The startup operates a web based platform that fits staff with psychological well being coaches. “Workers may actually open their telephone, click on a button—they do not have to make an appointment weeks upfront—and communicate to a skilled psychological well being skilled about your day by day stresses,” says Kim in a video interview. “Our function is to make psychological healthcare as simple as checking the elements and as at ease as chatting with a pal.”
Ami is founded in Singapore as a result of lots of the call for for its services and products recently comes from the city-state in addition to Indonesia’s capital Jakarta—two of Asia’s maximum colourful startup hubs. “We are opting for to concentrate on fast-growing startups since the worker base is more youthful and so they’re a lot more open to wellness and emotional well being,” says Kim. Operating at a startup will also be extra aggravating as a result of the breakneck expansion and holding best skill is a rising precedence for startups, he provides.
“I believe Asia will catch up very quickly to the rage within the West relating to psychological healthcare.”
Kim launches Ami amid emerging call for for on-line psychological healthcare, as pandemic-related lockdowns and social distancing took a toll on folks’s wellbeing. In keeping with a find out about revealed within the Lancet clinical magazine in October, 76.2 million extra nervousness problems have been reported globally in 2020.
Over the following one year, Kim targets to increase Ami additional into Asia, together with Hong Kong and South Korea. “We began this corporate with the transparent goal of establishing this for pan-Asia,” he says.
Asia is house to one of the crucial international’s maximum overworked nations. The common individual in South Korea, for instance, labored 1,908 hours in 2020, the fourth maximum amongst evolved nations, in accordance to knowledge compiled by way of the Group for Financial Cooperation and Building (OECD). By way of comparability, the common individual within the U.S. labored 1,767 hours in the similar yr.
In Japan, lengthy operating hours are so pervasive that dying by way of overwork—known as “karoshi” in Eastern—has been legally identified as a reason behind dying for the reason that Eighties. And extra not too long ago in China, millennials uninterested in the tradition of brutally lengthy paintings hours, such because the “996” time table (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days every week), are opting for to “lie flat”—or “tang ping” in Chinese language—and decide out of the rat race.
A businessman drowsing on a bench at a Tokyo teach station.
YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP by the use of Getty Photographs
Kim, who has additionally labored in trade construction at Bloomberg in Hong Kong, is aware of the hazards of overwork all too smartly. In 2019, he used to be identified with generalized nervousness dysfunction, which is power and over the top being concerned. “He’s a transparent instance of an excellent use case and a consumer [of mental health services like Ami],” says Jin Oh, a spouse at Goodwater Capital who led the company’s funding in Ami. “That used to be one thing that constructed a large number of conviction for me—that he actually understands the marketplace that he’s tackling.”
Whilst psychological healthcare continues to be nascent in a lot of Asia, John Nahm, cofounder and managing spouse of Robust Ventures, believes that in the hunt for psychological healthcare can briefly turn into destigmatized within the area. “Now we have a large number of homogeneous cultures [in Asia],” notes Nahm, who led his company’s funding in Ami. “If one influential individual does it, then it catches on.”
Nahm issues out that psychological well being practices like Buddhist meditation, which has been embraced by way of the West, originated from Asia. “I believe Asia will catch up very quickly to the rage within the West relating to psychological healthcare,” he says. “And I believe it’ll be at an sped up tempo.”
