With its tailored services, Oliva is changing the mental health game.
What if mental healthcare was as natural—and as stigma-free—as going to the gym?
That’s the idea behind Oliva, an employee mental health startup based in London. Founded in 2020 by Javier Suarez, cofounder of TravelPerk, and Sançar Sahin, a former VP of Marketing at Hotjar, the company has grown to include clients such as Aesop and Scopely.
“Javier Suarez and I both experienced burnout firsthand,” Sahin says. “We both knew something had to change. That’s why we created Oliva—to make it easier for people to get the mental health support they really need while navigating successful careers.”
The company aims to make mental healthcare a part of daily life for busy employees while staying a cost-friendly workplace benefit for employers. But how?
One tactic: Dramatically shortening the “dating” process of finding a therapist. By looking at character traits and personal backgrounds, the company matches individuals and therapists in under 48 hours with a 97 percent success rate—far exceeding the 33 percent average for traditional services—according to its website. In addition to one-on-one therapist sessions, Oliva also offers self-guided content, group sessions, and text-based support. The myriad of services is designed to meet people where they feel most comfortable about receiving mental healthcare. More importantly, it aims to deliver therapy in the most effective way.
As a result, the company has found that clients need fewer sessions—saving their employers’ money—and are more inclined to stay at their jobs. By sharing anonymous data analysis with partner employers, Oliva also shines light on organization-wide wellbeing problems so companies can address them.
To track client progress and determine care, therapists use Oliva’s Wellbeing Model, which looks at mental health from social, financial, emotional, professional and physical angles. The model was created by Dr. Sarah Bateup, Oliva’s Chief Clinical Officer, who’s held posts at ieso (also a data-driven mental healthcare startup) and Clerkenwell. Dr. Bateup has been working in digital health since 2017.
The fusion of tech and wellbeing is core to Oliva’s business—even down to its domain name, Oliva.health. “We chose .health because we are a mental wellbeing solution,” says cofounder Sancar Sahin. “We felt like it would appropriately reflect our commitment to not just the tech side of our business but the health side.”
And Oliva’s work is gaining traction: In the past two years, Oliva’s network quintupled to include 250 therapists in 27 countries and revenues grew 300 percent year-over-year. In June 2023, the company announced a $5.15 million investment, led by Molten Ventures, bringing its total funding to $13 million. The money will go towards expansion, especially in more U.S. states, and the development of an app—all getting it closer to its ultimate goal: making therapy more accessible.