The Chinese psychotherapy industry is opening up to tele-mental health options which are more accessible both financially, technologically while being socially acceptable.

However, there are a few both supply and demand challenges to the industry

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Supply challenges

Trained clinical psychologists are in very short supply partly because of the lack of supervised training opportunities and partly because the current medical system.

The ‘Mental Health Law’ allows psychiatrists to provide psychotherapy but it does not require them to receive training to do so

There are very few institutions in the country that have qualified clinical supervisors who could provide high-quality training in psychotherapy, so few psychiatric hospitals include formal training in psychotherapy as part of the required experience for being qualified as a psychiatrist

The quality of the existing graduate training programs is an area of concern

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Demand challenges

There is a huge stigma against counselling which prevents people from adopting the same

People are unaware about counselling and its benefits and it leads to negligence

People resort to other means to relieve stress – Sports, talking to a friend or letting it solve itself naturally.

The business wanted to enter the market with few resources and scale it up in years to come. There were unique challenges that needed to be solved for including, but not limited to –

(A) Developing the market to expand the industry from both supply and demand sides

(B) Identify & capture existing white spaces in the industry

(C) Customer prioritization & expansion in the next 5 years

(D) Product features & offerings for the next 5 years

(E) Strategic road map for the next 5 years

(F) Identifying & prioritization of the most suitable business model and investment options

The main challenge was to figure out a go-to-market strategy for a business in a nascent industry in China. The challenge is to build a proposition for all the stakeholders including users, therapists & others. The challenge also is to identify the service levels offered and expansion strategy going forward.

The 3 key challenges were –

Solving for the supply problem – How do we ensure both quality and quantity of therapists which are in short supply in China & with no benchmarks for quality standards? How to recruit therapists from China or other geographies?

Solving for the demand problem – How do we recruit existing therapy users from other services? How do we expand the size of the industry and get new users after a point in time? How do we scale services for maximum capacity utilization?

Solving for the financial issues – Should we raise investment? How do we raise investment? What difference would it make if we raise investment and what if we don’t?

The key challenges were solved keeping in mind their financial viability, user acquisition and client’s preferences. Different investment options were evaluated basing which a portfolio of alternatives was proposed. Key takeaways –

Strategy for employee recruitment & retention using global benchmarks

Road-map for product, user & platform expansion

Financial forecasting using industry benchmarks to analyze financial investment options

The project is in execution phase with us directly consulting on the development.

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