Masawa Minute 30
Koa Health raises €30m | Keeping the workplace wellness momentum going | + More!
This is the Masawa Minute — mental wellness, social impact, and impact investing snippets on what we’re pondering + where you can get active.
The end of winter is just around the corner! We’re thrilled — even though it turns out that certain studies don’t find a link between the weather and personal wellbeing, some of us have personal experiences that suggest otherwise. Regardless of how you’re feeling about the subject, we hope you’re staying well and are preparing to welcome spring into your hearts.
Masawa Thoughts
Founders pitch us their start-ups every day. Some are ‘Therapy for ___’ or ‘Mental Health App for ____’. Others are using uncommon, yet proven, approaches to increase mental wellness. The ones that excite us the most are those taking a systems approach to both defining and addressing the issues. It’s never that because the issue is x, the solution is -x. Teams that understand how the various sociological, anthropological, economical, political, psychological, neurological, and humanical parts fit together are able to m.
We think about this in the context also of what we’re building. Yes, there is a huge gap in patient and impact-focused capital for entrepreneurs in the mental wellness sectors. There’s a huge gap in sector coordination between charities/non-profits, foundations, scientists, policymakers, research, media, and corporations. There’s a huge gap in also nurturing founders’ wellbeing, which poses a large investment risk. There’s a huge gap in the enabling environment, the collection of regulations, values, beliefs, data, and research, to help ensure successful uptake of mental wellness. We’re certainly not going to address all of these issues alone, but by considering the entire system in everything we do, we can better prepare for serendipity.
Attend
MOVE Series — Leadership 2.0: Leading High-Performing Teams and Organizations in an Era of Change
In this fireside chat Stephen M. Ross School of Business Dean Scott DeRue, PhD, and Stephen M. Ross School of Business professor Lindy Greer, PhD, will discuss their research and teaching surrounding the increasing demands of leaders to lead agile and adaptive teams, remote collaboration, and diverse workforces. They’ll also take a look at the newest trends in leadership research and practice. The event, taking place on February 19 (this Friday!) from 2.00 to 3.00 p.m. EST, will kick off the Michigan Ross MOVE series. Don’t miss it!
What we’re reading…
👩💼 From Masawa: Keeping the workplace wellness momentum going
The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum has passed, leaving us with memories and recordings of many business executives, policymakers, and experts discussing how to create a positive lasting change. Among numerous exciting sessions, a topic that particularly drew our attention was integrating mental wellbeing into the workplaces on a global scale. Creating mentally healthy workplaces and resilient organizations is a goal that’s very important to us and our mission and, therefore, we decided to share some thoughts and suggestions on how to keep its momentum going.
Mental health issues aren’t a problem restricted to the workplace — for instance, GenZ and Millennials placed large-scale societal challenges like climate change at the top of a list of causes for stress and anxiety. This suggests that change on a broad scale is needed — until we make meaningful progress on issues like climate change, social injustice, and economic inequity, we can’t hope to fundamentally improve the mental wellbeing of our society. Taking care of our mental wellness now can help us tackle these challenges more effectively, yet in the long run, we need to see a shift in thinking, behaving, existing on our planet with each other.
While the workplace alone won’t solve this, it can be a place where improving mental wellness can start — after all, it’s where we spend most of our waking hours. Prioritizing what’s important and giving people space to start taking care of themselves can go a long way, and the shift is beginning to take place: Deloitte, Unilever, and other companies have signed a newly launched pledge, committing to prioritizing mental health and creating an open culture aimed at eliminating stigma in their organizations; reimbursable services like access to teletherapy are on the rise; mental health education programs in the workplace are being initiated. We can only have hope and do our part to make sure these glimpses of change are only the beginning.
Mental wellness in the workplace is going mainstream, it needs to go further
🌾 From Masawa: What do we mean when we talk about mental wellness?
Another newly-published article of ours discusses the subject of mental wellness. Since it’s a term we use so often, we decided it’s time we take a look at what it means and why we consider it so essential.
We think of mental wellness as a dynamic inner state that enables individuals to realize their full potential. It’s an internal resource that needs to be restored and sustained, one that contributes to innate, deep-seated human needs. Mental wellness can be understood as a continuum along which all of us exist, yet where our place isn’t static: just like physical health, our mental wellness has its ups and downs, it can be worse today and better tomorrow. Considering this, it’s also important to note that mental wellness doesn’t mean the absence of mental illness; the two can coexist when the illness is managed with appropriate support solutions.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to fostering mental wellness, yet experiences like pain, sadness, and a desire for happiness are common for all of us. Mental wellness isn’t just about us as individuals — to fully thrive, we need to be a part of healthy and supportive communities. Similarly, it’s strongly shaped by environmental factors and external forces such as technology, socio-economic status, inequality, culture, and environmental issues. We at Masawa continuously work to address the causes of mental illness through a range of investment areas and try to do our part in creating a world where everyone has the support and the ability to thrive.
Mental Wellness: An Ongoing Journey of Inner Transformation
🌊 Riding the wave of opportunity
Revent, an early-stage European venture capital fund, is confident that its target fund of €50 million will be reached, with the first close already completed. The fund, headquartered in Berlin, is focusing on environmental and societal problems, looking to fund startups that combine purpose and profit.
So far, Revent has made four investments: Tomorrow Bank, a pioneer of sustainable banking; Sylvera, a company providing data on nature-based carbon offsetting projects; Tomorrow, a company developing technology that help individuals and organizations reduce their carbon footprint; and net purpose, a data provider that allows asset managers measure the social and environmental impact of their portfolios.
According to Revent’s founding partners Emily Brooke and Dr. Lauren Lentz, there’s a new wave of founders that seek to tackle the planet’s systemic problems, and investment in positive impact sectors, such as ed-tech and mental health is booming. As Lentz has put it, more and more founders are looking for investors that combine impact and financing mindsets rather than a traditional VC. They want investors who believe that these two things reinforce each other and understand that the positive social impact will generate financial returns. We couldn’t agree more.
📱 Another win for digital healthcare
Koa Health, a Barcelona-based digital mental health care provider, has just closed a €30 million Series A funding round. The round had a first close in October 2020, led by Wellington Partners Life Sciences and Ancora Finance Group, and has now fully closed with contributions from MTIP, Akilia Partners, and others.
The company’s main product is Koa Foundations, a mental wellness app that enables people to take care of themselves on their own terms through CBT, positive psychology and mindfulness-based activities and tools, and personalized user experience to sustain engagement and improve effectiveness. According to Koa Health’s internal study, people were able to reduce their stress in just two weeks.
Currently, the app is available to over 3 million people through contracts with employers, healthcare providers, and payers. Koa Health is planning to use the funds to develop the product, further increasing the number of diagnoses their solutions can support, adding more wellness content, and expand internationally, including the US. We can’t wait to see what comes next on their journey.
Barcelona-based Koa Health extends Series A round to €30 million
💸 Why offering mental health benefits makes employers better off?
Lately, we have been talking about the workplace and mental health a lot, yet, in the name of keeping this important conversation going, we’re sharing another article on the subject. Many of us are currently navigating challenging working conditions as well as an avalanche of stressors that are coming at us every day. As a result, we’re exhausted, overwhelmed, anxious, and perpetually stressed. Mental health support in the workplace is essential and here are some reasons why employers shouldn’t hold off making it available.
Major depressive disorders are contributing to 27 lost workdays per year per employee, while bipolar disorders are associated with 66 lost workdaysper year per employee. That also leads to costs increasing by $4,426 and $9,619 per employee per year, respectively. Additionally, these mental health conditions can be associated with various physical conditions, like obesity and heart disease, that drive the costs up even more. In fact, mental health conditions cause more years lived with a disability than any other health condition. When people are struggling with stress and anxiety, as is the case now more than ever, productivity also goes down.
But there also is good news: there’s ample evidence that mental health treatment backed by clinically validated approaches can reduce the costs and lost workdays dramatically while notably improving productivity. According to a 2018 study, for every $1 invested in evidence-based treatments, there’s a return of $2-$4, although the real ROI may very well be even greater as the estimated cost of mental health disorders is likely to be higher. Therefore a range of mental health benefits such as in-person counseling, internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy, apps for exercise motivation or mindfulness, or a hybrid approach that offers something for everyone should be considered — after all, a healthy organization is a successful organization.
Why It’s Vital For Employers To Add Mental Health Benefits
In Closing
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Gabija works as a Marketing & Communications Coordinator at Masawa. She lets her vision of a more just, sustainable, equitable world guide Masawa’s story and inform the work towards transforming global mental wellness to make it accessible and accepted.
