Clinic-assigned attention games for children with ADHD, with progress reports
TL;DR Heedling is a tablet game that kids with ADHD play for 20 minutes at home, five days a week, on a plan their clinician sets. Child development centres buy it per child and pass a fee on to parents. What it sells is structured practice between visits and clean data for the therapist, not a cure.
ADHD is common in Indian kids. A 2022 meta-analysis of 19 Indian studies put pooled prevalence at 63.2 per 1,000 children, and school samples ran higher at 75.1 per 1,000[1]. Care is thin on the ground. The National Mental Health Survey found a treatment gap of 83% across mental disorders[2], and most families who do reach a clinic see a therapist once a week at best.
The weak spot is everything that happens between visits. Parents get worksheets and advice but no way to show the therapist what the child practised or whether focus held up over the week. So the therapist ends up relying on a tired parent's memory, which isn't great.
What it does, in regulatory terms: supervised practice and progress tracking only. Heedling does not diagnose ADHD and it doesn't claim to treat it. Any claim that it improves symptoms would make it medical device software under India's Medical Devices Rules 2017[3], so that claim waits for trial data and a licence.
Here's how it works. A clinician sets a plan in a web dashboard and the child plays short levels that ask them to hold attention, ignore distractors and switch tasks, with difficulty that adjusts to their recent scores. Each week the therapist sees minutes played, accuracy trends and missed days, and the parent gets a two-line summary.
The seed version had gamified neurofeedback with brain-signal headsets. I dropped the headset. A 2025 meta-analysis of 38 trials found no group-level evidence for neurofeedback as a stand-alone ADHD treatment[4]. Computerised attention training has a better record, including an AIIMS and UC San Diego trial in Indian children[5], so the product sits on that line of work without the hardware cost.
The child plays, the parent pays and the clinician decides. Centres would add Heedling to a therapy package or charge it as a monthly add-on, and Heedling bills the centre per active child. The closest priced reference a US prescription ADHD game at US$99 for 30 days, about ₹9,600[6]. Nobody publishes what Indian centres charge for home programmes, so working out the price is part of validation.
Paediatric developmental care is turning into chains. One child-therapy chain raised ₹65 crore in August 2026 and runs more than 90 centres in over 22 cities[7], and chains like that want home programmes they can measure. CDSCO also publishes guidance on medical device software under MDR 2017[3], which gives you a known route to a treatment claim later.
There's no public figure for what India spends on digital ADHD tools. The narrow signal is clinical - about 6 in 100 children may have ADHD[1], and the paying channel is growing, with one chain alone at 90+ centres[7]. A realistic first market is a few hundred centres, each with 30–150 active ADHD cases (my estimate, to be tested).
That chain bundles therapy with its own digital tools, so it could be a buyer or a competitor[7]. A Chennai rehab start-up launched a platform in October 2026, for life skills across several conditions[8]. A US prescription game is the global reference for an attention game cleared as a treatment[6]. ONTRAC showed the approach works in Indian children but stayed a research programme[5].
What's missing is a single-purpose ADHD practice tool that independent centres can use without building their own.
| Difficulty | Moderate (49/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.4–2.6 Cr |
| Time to launch | 12–18 months |
A small team can build the game itself. The hard parts are clinical and commercial - designing tasks with a child psychologist, keeping kids playing past week three, and running a pilot with outcome measures solid enough that clinicians trust the reports.
Practice and tracking alone may not need a device licence, but any treatment claim does.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Heedling does not diagnose ADHD or claim to treat it, and AI must not either. Any reading of a child's progress belongs to the clinician.
Want to work out the AI layer for Heedling? Talk to Yash →
I think this is worth a shot if you pair game design with a child psychologist co-founder and can sell to clinics. If you're hoping to sell a brain-training app straight to parents then it's not for you. Prove adherence first - 70% of children still playing four days a week at week six.
Plan for roughly ₹1.4–2.6 Cr, covering clinical task design, the game, a pilot and regulatory work.
Only for a treatment claim. Software that treats a condition is a medical device under the Medical Devices Rules 2017, so stay with practice and tracking until you hold a licence.
Yes. A US attention game is cleared as a treatment in the US. Each country has its own device and children's data rules, so check with the regulator first.
The free Heedling validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the medical-device and children's-data checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for clinicians and parents, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Heedling or something close to it? The make-or-break work is a clinic pilot that shows kids keep playing and clinicians actually use the reports, and that's the kind of thing I help founders plan. If you need a hand, you know where to find me. Talk to Yash →
For illustration only. Names are fictional and ideas hypothetical; sourced facts are real but may be out of date. Nothing here is legal, financial or professional advice, and Yash Khatri is not personally liable for any use of it. Read the full disclaimer.