Between-session exercises and progress summaries that therapists assign
TL;DR Homeworkly is a tool therapists hand to clients for the six days between appointments. The therapist sets short exercises and mood check-ins, AI tunes the reminders within that plan, and the therapist gets a one-page summary before the next session. Therapists and clinics pay a monthly seat fee.
Most Indians with a mental disorder get no care at all. The 2015–16 national survey found 10.56% of adults had a current disorder and 84.5% of them were untreated[1]. Clinicians are scarce too, at about 0.75 psychiatrists per lakh people against a desirable 3[2].
People who do reach a therapist often stop going. A global meta-analysis put psychotherapy dropout at about one client in five[3]. Between weekly sessions homework gets forgotten and the therapist has no view of how the week went, so the first 15 minutes of an expensive hour go on catching up. I found no India-specific dropout figure, which is worth measuring in a pilot.
What it does, in regulatory terms: monitoring and clinician decision support. It does not diagnose and does not deliver therapy on its own. CDSCO's 2026 software guidance can treat tools that monitor a disorder as medical devices[4], so get a classification before making any claims.
Here's how it works. After a session, the therapist picks two or three tasks from a library written by clinical psychologists (a thought record, a breathing drill, a sleep task) and schedules check-ins using standard scales like PHQ-9. The client gets nudges in English or Hindi. AI changes timing and wording inside the therapist's plan and never writes therapy content of its own. Before the next visit, the therapist sees completion, mood trend and the client's notes. A worrying answer shows the client the Tele-MANAS number 14416 at once and alerts the therapist.
The seed pitched AI micro-interventions acting alone. I reframed it because stand-alone mental-health apps lose almost all users within two weeks[5], while feeding progress back to a clinician improves outcomes and cuts dropout, if only modestly[6].
The daily users are urban clients aged 20–45 in therapy for anxiety, depression or stress. The payer is the therapist or clinic. Independent psychologists and counsellors seeing 15–40 clients a week come first, and group practices, psychiatry departments and de-addiction centres follow. As a price anchor, one US therapist-tools platform lists US$69 a seat, about ₹6,700[7]. Indian practitioners will pay far less, and I'd assume ₹800–2,000 a month. Charging clients directly would only add friction to the therapist's recommendation.
A 2021 meta-analysis of 58 studies and 21,699 patients settled that progress feedback helps[6]. Tele-MANAS has handled over 32 lakh calls since 2022 across 53 cells, which creates a stream of people who need follow-up care[8]. CDSCO's July 2026 software guidance and the DPDP Rules of November 2025 mean a founder can now design to known lines.
Nobody publishes the size of the therapist-tools segment in India. Adjacent: one market research firm puts India's mental health apps market at US$497.9M in 2024 (about ₹4,800 Cr), growing 18.5% a year[9]. Almost all of that is consumer self-help, so treat it as context. The useful number is bottom-up - practising therapists, times adoption, times a seat fee. A verified count of practising counsellors is the missing input.
The big Indian online-therapy platforms offer between-session tools and mood tracking, but only to clients on their own platforms[10][11]. One AI companion app of Indian origin now positions itself as wellness with no diagnosis or treatment advice[12]. A US therapist-tools platform sells measurement tools and assignable worksheets to therapists[7]. The gap is a low-cost tool for the many Indian therapists who work outside the big platforms.
| Difficulty | Moderate (41/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹1.1–2 Cr |
| Time to launch | 6–9 months |
The software is ordinary. The hard parts are AI that adapts in several Indian languages without straying from approved content, risk flags that catch real danger without crying wolf, and selling to therapists one at a time. They're cautious about anything that touches clients, and each one has to trust you.
Possibly. It depends on how CDSCO classifies symptom tracking, so ask before you make any claims.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Never let AI deliver therapy or judge risk on its own. A worrying answer always shows the helpline and alerts a human, every single time.
Want to work out the AI layer for Homeworkly? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I like this as a sensible, modest B2B business for a founder with real links to practising psychologists and the patience to sell one practice at a time. If you want to build an AI therapist for consumers then don't, because regulation, safety and retention all push against you. Prove first that therapists keep paying after the trial ends.
My estimate is ₹1.1–2 Cr to launch, covering the app, a clinician-written exercise library, a classification request and early sales. The kit breaks it down.
Possibly. If CDSCO decides symptom tracking makes it a medical device then you'll need a licence, so ask for a classification early and design DPDP consent for sensitive data.
Yes. US therapist-tools platforms already sell something similar in the US. Check how your own regulator treats software that tracks mental-health symptoms before you launch.
The free Homeworkly validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the device-software and data-protection checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for therapists and clinics, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking of building Homeworkly or something like it? The make-or-break bit is settling the device question early and getting the first 30 therapists to pay, and that's the kind of thing I help founders with. 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.