Justin Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of Ami.
COURTESY OF JUSTIN KIM
TOAfter working at two fast-growing startups in South Korea, Justin Kim, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia alum of 2020, launched her own startup, called Ami, which aims to make mental health care more accessible to overworked and stressed workers in Asia.
Kim, along with co-founder Beknazar Abdikamalov, launched to me in beta mode earlier this month. Kim, who serves as CEO, was recently a product owner at Korean billionaire Lee Seung-gun‘s Viva Republica, which operates the Toss financial super app, while Abdikamalov, CTO, was a software engineer at Amazon. The two previously worked together at Miso, a Seoul-based home services platform backed by famous Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator (which fostered startups like Airbnb, Coinbase and DoorDash) and an honoree from last year. Forbes Asia 100 to follow.
Ami raised $1 million in pre-seed funding from venture capital firms Goodwater Capital (which has backed Kakao, Coupang and Viva Republica), Strong Ventures (Miso and Korbit, South Korea’s first cryptocurrency exchange), January Capital and Collaborative Fund. Several notable angel investors also participated in the round, including Khosla Ventures’ operating partner Irene Au and Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president of products.
The startup operates an online platform that connects employees with mental health coaches. “Employees could literally open their phone, click a button (they don’t have to make an appointment weeks in advance), and talk to a trained mental health professional about their daily stress,” Kim says in a video interview. “Our goal is to make mental health care as easy as checking the weather and as comfortable as talking to a friend.”
Ami is based in Singapore because most of the demand for its services currently comes from the city-state and the Indonesian capital. Jakarta—two of the most vibrant startup hubs in Asia. “We chose to focus on fast-growing startups because the employee base is younger and they are much more open to wellness and emotional health,” says Kim. Working at a startup can be more stressful due to breakneck growth, and retaining top talent is a growing priority for startups, he adds.
“I think Asia will catch up very soon with the trend in the West when it comes to mental health care.”
Kim launches Ami amid growing demand for online mental health care as pandemic-related lockdowns and social distancing have affected people’s well-being. According to a study published at Lancet medical journal in October, 76.2 million more anxiety disorders were reported worldwide in 2020.
Over the next 12 months, Kim aims to expand Ami further into Asia, including Hong Kong and South Korea. “We started this company with the clear intention of building this for all of Asia,” he says.
Asia is home to some of the most overworked countries in the world. The average person in South Korea, for example, worked 1,908 hours in 2020, the fourth-most among developed countries. according to data compiled by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). By comparison, the average person in the US worked 1,767 hours in the same year.
In Japan, long working hours are so widespread that death from overwork, called “karoshi” in Japanese, has been legally Recognized as a cause of death since the 1980s. And more recently in China, millennials tired of the culture of brutally long working hours, like the “996” schedule (9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week ), they are choosing to “lie down” or “tang ping”. in Chinese, and opt out of the rat race.
A businessman sleeping on a bench in a Tokyo train station.
YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP via Getty Images
Kim, who has also worked in business development at Bloomberg in Hong Kong, knows all too well the risks of overwork. In 2019, he was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, which is chronic and excessively worrying. “It is a clear example of a very good use case and a user [of mental health services like Ami]says Jin Oh, a partner at Goodwater Capital who led the company’s investment in Ami. “That was something that convinced me a lot: that he really understands the market he is targeting.”
While mental health care is still nascent in much of Asia, John Nahm, co-founder and managing partner of Strong Ventures, believes the search for mental health care can quickly become de-stigmatized in the region. “We have many homogeneous cultures [in Asia]”, says Nahm, who led his company’s investment in Ami. “If an influential person does it, then it becomes fashionable.”
Nahm points out that mental health practices like Buddhist meditation, which have been adopted by the West, originated in Asia. “I think Asia will catch up very soon with the trend in the West when it comes to mental health care,” he says. “And I think it will be at an accelerated pace.”
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