Saying goodbye is always hard.

We founded Pause in the summer of ‘21. It was the middle of COVID & like many others around the world, we too were struggling with our mental health. The pandemic forced us to pause, throwing more questions than answers and we realised we should probably talk to someone.

Our futile search for a therapist gave way to Pause.

Over the next three years, did a lot of things that we’re still mighty proud of. We crafted an algorithm taking into account 40+ factors to match clients to the right fit therapist (our match rates were over 98%), conducted over 10000 hours of therapy for more than thousand clients & did over 3000 discovery calls where we helped (mostly) first time therapy seekers clear their doubts about the process.

We also realised that the only way to deliver excellent outcomes in therapy was to not only have exceptional therapists on board, but also doing what we can to enable them to do their best work. To help them & the Mental Health Ecosystem in general then, we built systems to assist them with everything from supervision & up-skilling to admin, scheduling and invoicing related tasks.

Most importantly though, we created a safe space & community for therapists themselves. Today, that community has 50+ therapists, all helping & supporting each other.

We obviously made a lot of mistakes too, which led us to this point, realising that as hard as it is, it’s best to let go while we still can. In hindsight, the mistakes seem obvious & we wish we were better prepared at the time. But we weren’t, and while that’s hard to accept, it’s also the truth.

We’re sure all of you will create a mental health organisation that does what we tried to do; provide empathetic, human & effective care for people so they have the strength to live their most creative, fulfilling lives.

We failed to do what we started out doing, but boy, are we glad we tried.

Aditi, Ankur, Srijan & the entire Pause family.

Since Pause started as a labour of love, we thought it fitting to give it the send-off it deserved. In that spirit, here are some of the things we’re extremely proud of.

Something about yourself

the highlight reel

- Pioneered a discovery call format that answered all client questions about the therapeutic process & understood their needs to be able to match them to a therapist who was best suited for them.

- Took the intake form concept one level further & made our proprietary MSE which had an algorithm to match users to their best fit therapists based on over 40 parameters.

- Between the two above, we were pretty successful at therapist matching with a hit rate of over 98%.

- Developed a therapy program for people we felt really needed specialised context dependent care, founders & creatives.

- Succeeded in making therapy more accessible by humanising the process and making it hilarious.

some numbers

- Total MSE’s filled: > 5000

- Discovery calls booked: > 3000

- Therapy sessions done: > 10000 hours

- Therapists earned over Rs 1,25,00,000

- Total therapists in network: >50

- Total clients served: > 1000

- Hours saved for therapists: > 10000

- Average turn around time for a therapy session: < 3 days

- Estimated cups of coffee consumed: > 12000

the little blue book

We took company culture pretty seriously & for hard times, we made the Little Blue Book (directly inspired by the Little Red Book from Facebook).

the favourites

Some of our favourite work that we created at Pause.

(our first logo)

The first landing page made hurriedly when we put out a post & got 250 sign ups on day 1, without having any semblance of a product in place.

The updated website with Pookie, our beloved Panda mascot designed by Aaquib Wani design in 2022.

The many moods of Pookie. Little did we know a different Pookie would become a pop culture icon in 2024.

The first posts we put out on our social media channels.

A few of our favourite advertising campaigns.

One of our first monthly meeting. We had a grand total of 5 therapists at this time.

Pain & Company. A merch line that we created (which included a brick) but never got around to launching. We also bought the www.painandcompany.com domain name & made the logo a spoof of a well known consulting brand.

a final note

This was an intense, life changing experience for us. In different ways, Pause changed us fundamentally as people. For all of you who believed in us when you had no reason to, we thank you with all our heart.

See you on the other side.