Phased return-to-work plans after burnout or mental-health leave
TL;DR Rampback helps employees come back to work after leave for burnout, depression or anxiety. A trained case manager agrees a phased schedule and work adjustments with the employee, the manager and HR, then checks in weekly for up to three months. Employers pay per case, and treatment stays with the employee's own clinician.
Indian employers lose an estimated ₹1.1 lakh Cr a year to poor employee mental health, mostly through people working while unwell and through resignations, according to a 2022 survey by a large consultancy[1]. Eight in ten respondents reported a mental-health issue in the past year, and stigma kept a lot of them from asking for help[1].
The return after leave is where a good chunk of that loss gets decided. Picture someone who took six weeks off for burnout and comes back to the same workload, a manager who has no clue what to say and an HR team worried about privacy. Plenty of companies have counselling helplines but nobody plans the first month back.
So people relapse or quietly resign, and the company loses the very person it just paid to recover.
What it does, in regulatory terms: workplace coordination only. No diagnosis or treatment. Rampback does not assess or treat mental illness. Clinical care stays with the employee's psychiatrist or psychologist, and the employee decides what health information, if any, gets shared.
The seed pitched AI coaching of daily life rhythm to prevent burnout and I reframed it. General burnout coaching is a crowded field, and this directory already has several ideas on it. The return to work is a narrow moment with a clear buyer and nobody owning it.
Here's how it works - before the employee returns, a case manager meets them and, with consent, gets a short fitness-for-work note from their clinician. Together they draft a plan with hours rising over four to eight weeks, protected tasks, no on-call at first and a named contact. The case manager then runs a three-way meeting with the manager and HR and coaches the manager on what to say. Weekly check-ins catch trouble early. The evidence is modest though. Work-focused therapy raised full return to work by about a fifth in pooled trials[2], while a heavy 18-month German programme showed no clear effect[3]. So Rampback stays light and practical.
The buyer is the HR head or employee-benefits lead, usually at a company of 1,000 or more staff that already has a counselling helpline. The user is the returning employee, with the manager as a second user. I found no public Indian price for return-to-work case management, so ₹25,000–60,000 per case, or a yearly retainer, is my assumption to test.
Employers are already spending on mental health but can't show what they got for it. Indian law raises the stakes too. The Mental Healthcare Act guarantees confidentiality of mental-health information[4], and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act counts mental illness as a disability and bars employment discrimination[5]. A badly handled return is now a legal and reputational risk.
There's no public figure for return-to-work services in India, and I found no public data on how many Indian employees take mental-health leave. The cost figure of ₹1.1 lakh Cr a year[1] is the size of the problem and not a market. Treat corporate wellness market estimates as adjacent at best.
Indian EAP providers run counselling for employees[6], and mental-health platforms offer therapy and psychiatry[7]. Both treat the person but neither plans the work side with the manager. In the Netherlands and Germany, occupational health services run reintegration programmes, and trials such as Vital@Work are testing them[8]. The gap in India is a neutral party that gets the employee, the manager and HR on the same page.
| Difficulty | Moderate (40/100) |
| Starting capital | ₹50–90 L |
| Time to launch | 4–6 months |
The service needs very little technology. The hard parts are trust and talent - employees must believe their health details stay private, and case managers need clinical sense and corporate tact in the same person. Each case also hangs on a manager who may quietly resent the lighter workload.
There's no licence to run return-to-work coordination, but mental-health and disability law shape every step.
Building this outside India? The categories above usually have a local equivalent, so check with your own regulator.
Don't trust AI with anything clinical, such as judging fitness for work or risk of self-harm. That stays with the employee's clinician and a trained case manager.
Want to work out the AI layer for Rampback? Talk to Yash →
Here's what can go south -
I'd back this for a founder with occupational psychology or HR business-partner experience who can hire careful case managers. If you want to build an app then this is a poor fit. Prove first that 80% of supported employees are still at work on full hours six months after returning, and that managers rate the process as useful.
Plan for roughly ₹50–90 L, most of it on hiring and training case managers and winning the first employer contracts.
No operating licence, but you must follow the Mental Healthcare Act on confidentiality, the disability law on accommodation and the DPDP Act on consent.
It can be if you get steady referrals at ₹25,000–60,000 per case, but that price is still an assumption to test. Low case volume is the main risk.
The free Rampback validation kit has the line-by-line capital breakdown, the effort scoring, the confidentiality and disability-law checklist, a 14-day validation sprint with pass/fail targets, a 90-day launch plan, 10 interview questions for HR teams, managers and employees, and 5 assumptions to test. Download the kit →
Thinking about building Rampback or something close to it? The make-or-break work is earning referrals from HR teams while keeping every employee's health details out of their manager's hands. 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.