Have you experienced that deep sinking feeling of wanting to share your vulnerabilities, but too scared to articulate them? Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung explained that loneliness isn’t simply a lack of people in our immediate environment, but our inability to communicate the thoughts in the deepest recesses of our minds. We’ve developed 15-minute delivery systems, broken geographical barriers by connecting users across the globe, and developed at breakneck speed. Yet, in this uber-connected, resource-rich world, we’re witnessing a generation with flailing mental health issues.
A day begins and ends with the screen, blasted by shorts and reels. Our minds, not equipped to handle this kind of stimulation, create exhaustion and emotional fatigue. In a world dominated by technology and digital media, former Flipkart executive Rishi Diwan wants to revitalise the art of human listening.
The mental health challenges faced by his wife and the vulnerable conversations shared with his father-in-law on his deathbed acted as the catalyst for Diwan to create Sunno, a marketplace with trained human listeners, aiming to create a non-judgmental, safe space for people.
Graduating from IIT Delhi, coupled with an MBA from IIM Calcutta, his journey started in the manufacturing industry, but quickly shifted to e-commerce, with stints at companies such as DealShare, TVS and Atyls. What followed was an important role at Flipkart, where he monitored demand, supply, and replenishment of products in dark stores, helping it scale to a sizeable level.
The Lonliness Epidemic by Numbers
In 2023, former US Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a major epidemic, equating the health risk of social isolation to smoking 15 cigarettes a day . According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 1 in 6 people is experiencing loneliness, resulting in over 8,71,000 deaths annually. NIMHANS last survey suggested that close to 43% Indian feel lonely.
According to a global survey, India is the third loneliest country in the world. Lack of awareness and lack of health infrastructure have played a major role in these issues. While the WHO recommends that every 100,000 people should have 3 psychologists in any healthy nation. We have 0.75 for the same population , highlighting a lack of trained individuals.
How Sunno’s Listening Model Works:
Created on the existential psychology model built by Emiratius Stanford Scientist Irvin Yalom, it works on the principle that death, freedom, isolation and meaningfulness are the four pillars of life. When any of them are affected negatively, it causes emotional stress.
Out of the different solutions Yalom proposed to counter this stress, Sunno emphasises universality and catharsis as the main pegs of their healing mechanism, where universality refers to reasserting the feeling that you’re not alone, and catharsis forms the process of verbalising your pain. The listeners are thus trained to gently nudge the speakers to speak about their issues while ensuring that they don’t feel stranded or isolated in their journey.
To gauge the emotional stress of the user, Sunno has created a User Demonstrated Emotional Level (UDEL) of 1-10. 1-3 is the healthy emotional layer, and 8-10 is the clinical level, when you may need help from a professional psychologist or psychiatrist. They only deal with 4-7 bands and refer the 8-10 band cases to other professional platforms or people, functioning in the pre-clinical stage. They also have an MD Psychiatry advisor, a practising clinical psychologist on their board, who helps them build training processes and validate everything.
Choosing its Listeners:
While onboarding listeners, Sunno look for people with an active listening background, i.e. people with a psychology background or those who have active listening and people management skills in their profiles, such as HR professionals or people managers.
After onboarding, listeners are trained for a week through classroom sessions, role-plays, and other methods, and are then judged on a seven-point rubric to measure how a listening session should proceed. This rating is based on factors such as pauses and breaks, advice compliance, maintaining flow, and maintaining emotional closeness.
Each session is monitored with the sole purpose of helping the listener become better over sessions, helping them perform to the requisite levels. Diwan assures that great care is taken to abide by data protection laws, and anything related to user data is destroyed after a particular compliance period.
Talking about one crucial reflective point in his journey, Rishi Diwan beamed with happiness, recalling a recent incident.
“The other day, we wanted to onboard 5 listeners, and within 12 hours, I received 2000 applications. What I learned is that there are so many people out there who are very happy to listen and contribute meaningfully to society.”
Biggest learning:
When asked about his biggest learning, Diwan spoke about the ikigai principle to find the perfect balance between what you love, what the world wants, what you are good at and what you can be paid for. Additionally, he suggested that simply getting a check from VCs shouldn’t be the end goal. Rather, one should understand their cash position, look to maximise their runway, donning a value creator mindset for the people trusting you, as opposed to simply burning cash. He also urged people who feel neglected or heavy to try the platform and give their feedback.
When people feel behind in life, it can be isolating. A world with so much information has created a poverty of attention, which raises the question: When was the last time you heard someone and felt heard? If you're struggling to find the answer, maybe it's time you change your lifestyle, prioritising human connection over likes, filters and digital desires. Platforms like Sunno are helping change this landscape one listener at a time.
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