Microsoft supports IWill with ‘AI for Accessibility’ Grant to Develop AI CBT mental Health Program for 615 million Hindi users

IWill, India’s leading mental-health platform has received a new grant from Microsoft’s ‘AI for Accessibility’ program to accelerate building its inclusive and effective Hindi-based AI Mental Health conversational program for more than 615 million Hindi-language users in the world.

The grant awarded to IWill will help the budding firm in its meticulous efforts to reduce this widening gap in India and overseas – specifically for Hindi language users, given that Hindi is the 3rd-most spoken language in the world. As per WHO, nearly 1 billion people live with a mental health condition globally, yet there is an acute shortage of evidenced, low-cost and local language-based mental health solutions.

Speaking on this occasion, Shipra Dawar, Founder & CEO of IWill, said, “We’re so excited and proud to receive the support from Microsoft. Since the brand’s inception, IWill as a company has worked to create solutions and offer programs that can benefit people dealing with emotional or mental health conditions across rural and urban areas, languages, economic and cultural differences both in India and overseas.”

“Hindi-AI-based mental health CBT solutions that are empathic, effective and accessible is an area we started working on during the pandemic. In addition, Microsoft’s grant along with the access to AI expertise and technology will further help us advance our research in accelerating evidence and empathy of Hindi-based, tech-enabled mental health solutions while working closely with the interoperability of other solutions present within communities to enable patient recovery, well-being, and growth. IWill, as a firm, will continue working towards bridging the gap with more language models and effective participatory solutions to reduce the last-mile linguistic gap. As IWill, we are delighted to receive the grant,” Ms. Dawar added.