From safe space to scale-up, coto is redefining emotional wellness with AI
Emotional wellness in India has long been underserved, but one startup is striving to change that. Launched by Tarun Katial, former CEO of Zee5, coto blends AI-powered tech with human expertise to deliver around-the-clock support—whether it’s therapy, relationship coaching, or alternative healing.
What happens when technology is designed not just to connect people but also to comfort them? That’s the idea behind , an emotional wellness platform that started as a women-first community space and is now evolving into a gender-neutral hub for 24/7 expert support.
Former Zee5 CEO Tarun Katial, who founded the startup in 2021, says the pivot was a necessary step in the platform’s evolution.
“In the last four years, we built over 7,000 communities, and the highest engagement came from the health and wellness communities. The common thing they all needed was support, and since we were looking into monetising the platform then, one-on-one consultations seemed ideal,” Katial tells YourStory.
With more than 3 million app downloads on the AppStore and Google Playstore, coto continues to be rooted in its core philosophy of being a safe space for women to be able to have conversations typically not present on social media.
“We started consultations in August 2024 and by January, opened up to all genders as we realised this wasn’t a pain point just for women. However, our communities continue to be only for women,” he says.
On the consultation side, the emotional wellness platform offers sessions across text, audio, and video with experts in multiple modalities—mental health, relationship coaching, astrology, tarot, and Reiki.
While coto is headquartered in Singapore, the B2C wellness platform has two offices in India, in Mumbai and Delhi. Apart from CEO Katial, the founding team includes Aparna Acharekar, Shefali Anurag, Raj Kamal Singhal (CBO), Zeebee Siwiec (CTO), and Tabi Bude (Chief Expansion Officer).
A democratic emotional wellness platform
coto currently hosts around 300 consultants on its platform, most of whom are vetted earlier to maintain quality standards. While freshers can apply directly, the acceptance rate is only about 30%, ensuring a high bar for expertise. As a gender-neutral space, the platform also requires all consultants to be LGBTQ-sensitive.
Among its services, CEO Katial notes that tarot reading and tarot therapy top the charts in popularity, followed closely by astrology and relationship coaching.
“Relationship support has the highest potential,” he says, “since many of the people who come to coto are navigating challenges and dysfunctions in their personal lives.”
The platform charges by the minute. For Indians, the price is Rs 40-50/minute, while globally it is close to $1/minute. And since consultation is available 24/7, there is always a team of counsellors available on the app at any given time.
“Think of our feed like a live TikTok feed where consultants talk about particular topics. Anytime a user logs in, they can scroll through the feed until they come across a topic of their choice. They can press a ‘call’ button to start their session,” Katial explains.
All counsellors are women—90% are Indians, and the rest are South Asians and Eastern Europeans. While the platform is slowly opening up to hiring men, the CEO emphasises that its consultants will only be mainly women.
“Many individuals, particularly women, often feel more comfortable and supported when engaging with female therapists. However, we recognise the value of diverse perspectives. We have male counsellors in specific categories where their expertise adds value,” he says.
Apart from India, coto has clients in Canada and the United Kingdom, mostly South Asians residing there. It is also seeing interest in the United States and the Middle East.
Technifying emotional wellness
The company employs 25 people, with the tech team operating remotely. Katial says all aspects of coto’s technology are led by AI and LLMs—OpenAI, Claude and Anthropic.
“We have a product analytics bot, a frontend bot, and a copywriter bot (in our marketing team). On the front end, whatever information we get from a user—whether through a form they filled, or through former consultation transcripts—we create content for the expert (consultant) so they know everything about the client,” he says.
AI also helps users map their healing journey by recommending particular follow-up sessions. “However, direct advice is always filtered through our experts. In matters of emotion, one needs to be very careful about what kind of advice is being imparted to clients.”
The CEO believes emotional wellness is “extremely underpenetrated” in India. He says digitisation has allowed wellness therapies to be more accessible to the public and is optimistic about the future.
“But we need to make sure that the services are high quality and the service providers are vetted. Emotional wellness as an industry is a $7 billion market in India. In the next five years, we want to clock hundreds of millions in revenue, which shouldn’t be a challenge as coto has both national and global opportunities.”
coto raised over $10 million in a private funding round led by Jungle Ventures (JV). Rishab Malik, Partner at JV, applauds coto’s rigorously vetted experts.
“coto is built to deliver lasting transformation, not fleeting consultations. Backed by a world-class leadership team, the platform has the vision and the execution muscle to redefine emotional wellness at a global scale,” he says.
coto aims to generate a monthly revenue of $1 million in the next six to nine months. It competes with global mindfulness companies such as San Francisco-based Calm.
Katial believes coto’s USP lies in its holistic approach to wellness.
“We are a truly integrated platform for emotional wellness. We are not just about consultation but also about transformative services. We want to ensure you end up in a space where you want to get to,” he says.
Edited by Swetha Kannan