Inuka Coaching raises 110k in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis to scale up its digital mental wellbeing service for organisations in the Netherlands

With gratefulness, pride and joy we announce today that Inuka coaching has raised a 110kEUR investment round to scale up our burnout prevention services for organisations in the Netherlands.

Inuka is an Amsterdam-based, social enterprise with the mission to make effective mental health support accessible for everyone. The main offering is a digital burnout prevention program for organisations. The program includes a wellbeing scan to map out the employee and organisational risk level, and a digital coaching program to coach at-risk employees back to resilience, typically in 4 sessions.

By combining the latest scientific insights with human empathy, we aim to set a new standard for quality coaching with measurable outcomes. We do this by training our own coaches on a proven method developed by co-founder and world-renowned psychiatrist Prof. Chibanda, also founder of the Friendship Bench. This radical innovation allows Inuka to offer top-quality coaching for all employees (including admin & factory staff) at an affordable price.

Inuka is currently working with organisations like Merkle, KIT Royal Tropical Institute, Philips and the National Police, and a couple of start-ups, among others. You can access two of our case studies here: Merkle, KIT.

For every employee that gets access to Inuka via their company, a vulnerable person also gets the mental support they need, thanks to the Inuka Foundation. 10% of Inuka’s shares is in the hands of the Inuka Foundation, which makes Inuka accessible to the most vulnerable in Kenya & Zimbabwe, together with our partner the Friendship Bench.

We are incredibly happy to get these highly experienced investors on board. They not only have expertise in our field and beyond, and networks to help us grow, but are also enormously kind-hearted, sharing our vision to have a mind for business AND a heart for the cause. Together, we view profit as a means to sustainable impact. We proudly welcome these investors to the Inuka family:

·       Wendy van Ierschot / Vie People. Leading investor and entrepreneur in the field of HR . Founder of VIE People, a consultancy for scaling companies that want to excel in People, Culture and Teams. Wendy, most influential Dutch business woman in 2017 and 2018, is also the founder of VIE Tech Capital, which provides strategic seed capital for people-focused tech start-ups, and is backed by the European Angels Fund.

·       Arjan Grootenboer. Angel investor and experienced entrepreneur with a passion for People and our Planet. After having sold his data-driven marketing company Oxyma to Merkle, Dentsu Aegis, he decided to invest time in and work for Start & Scale Ups that focus on a better, fairer and more sustainable world. He was Inuka’s first investor last year, and seeing our potential (and awesomely fun team), came on board as Chief Business Development in May 2020.

·       Maarten Broekema. Impact investor, experienced entrepreneur, and co-owner & business developer at Mantelaar. With a background in management consultancy, he founded BS&F, making insurance available for the most vulnerable in collaboration with municipalities. After growing BS&Fin 9 years to a successful company, he decided to focus on helping social enterprises to scale as investor, coach and entrepreneur. Maarten will support the expansion of Inuka into the social area to reach municipalities and insurance companies.

·       Mike Randall. Randall is a California based investor and serial entrepreneur who brings in his network and experience working for both large tech companies as well as growing his own start-ups. He has held leadership positions at Yahoo!, Facebook, and Snapchat in the early stages of the companies and, more recently, he is spending time leading, mentoring and growing socially orientated start-ups. He has an amazing marketing brain and a big heart, a combination that will help Inuka grow.

The investment will be used to extent our runway, professionalize Inuka’s marketing and service in the Netherlands and expand our services to more organizations.

This investment comes on top of a 125k EUR investment to scale up Inuka’s Kenyan activities, awarded via FMO and Rockstart’s Finture Solutions competition, which was announced mid-June.

These two investment rounds for the Netherlands and Kenya combined, provide Inuka with the runway needed to take us to the next level, and to be able to raise a seed-round,to work futher towards our ambition to become the leading, global digital coaching social enterprise.

Want to join our mission? Or interested to try Inuka out in your organization?

More information can be found on www.inuka.io, or reach out to inukacares@inuka.io!