GoKawiilOver the past few years, there has been a steady influx of startups trying to treat issues like depression, period pain, PMS, anxiety and insomnia by using wearables that apply electrical, magnetic or ultrasonic signals to stimulate the brain.
San Francisco-based Mave Health is the latest of that fleet, and claims its $495, neuromodulation headset can improve attention and mood, regulate stress, and even measure mental health. The startup is positioning the wearable as a non-medical device so it won’t need clearance from agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to sell in the U.S.
Dhawal Jain, who started the company in 2023 with his college batch mates Jai Sharma (CMO) and Aman Kumar (CTO), said he realized the need for such a device after his flatmate’s fiancée committed suicide during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Founders Aman Kumar, Jai Sharma, and Dhawal Jain. Image Credits: Mave Health
“In India, committing suicide is a crime, which meant there was police involved, and we had to speak to her psychologist. The answers we got from them made us question if any of it made sense. We started connecting with other psychologists and were getting the same answers,” Jain said.
The founders felt that there was no tangible way to measure progress in the mental health space. “For example, if you ask a psychologist how do you know if a person is making progress, their response to it is very standard, which is that it’s not about progress. It’s about process […] But for somebody with depression who is spending a lot of time in therapy, progress is important. So how do you know whether they’re making progress or not? And even these basic questions were not being answered.”
In an effort to solve that, the team started to learn more about neuroscience by talking to experts, and soon after realized that while there has been progress around neuromodulation in labs, consumers haven’t had the benefit of it.
The company then worked with medical device and mental health experts to conduct trials of the technology. But eventually it took a different route and positioned its headset as a lifestyle device. Jain said this approach would let Mave reach a wider audience.
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