Ex-CEO of Gaana Launches Spiritual Wellness Platform OMI; Bags Funding From Nexus Venture

Former CEO of popular online music streaming platform Gaana Prashan Agarwal has launched a spiritual wellness platform OMI. Agarwal, who is also cofounder of PropTiger, an online real estate company, came up with former Nexus Venture Partners’ Aniket Lila to launch OMI.

OMI is an online spiritual and wellness platform that aims to combine ancient vedic methods with a new-age lifestyle. At present the company’s app is available for download on Google Playstore. 

Nexus Venture Partners has invested an undisclosed amount of funding in OMI. On the occasion of the launch, Agarwal said, “Today the world is faced with a multitude of changes in our life in terms of the way we live, we connect, we embrace, unprecedented things we go through and this has had an impact on the spiritual, devotional, and mental wellbeing of all of us. Alongside, the internet and digital payment penetration amongst the Indian population is at an all time high and growing. These dynamics make the market ripe for innovation in this category.”

As per Agarwal, OMI will be used to hire talent across product, technology, and operations. 

Agarwal who is an alumni of IIT Kanpur over the past years has held multiple roles before becoming a serial entrepreneur. He held the position of vice president in Naukri.com for a period of four years. His most notable role had been as CEO of Gaana for a period of 5 years.  Under his leadership, Gaana’s monthly active users rose from 10 Mn to 180 Mn and even raised more $200 Mn from Tencent. 

Lila who is the other cofounder and COO of OMI on the launch said that they are disrupting a nearly 4000-year old market in India by bringing the best of what ancient India has to offer to millennials through a convenient, private, holistic, and personalised platform. 

He claimed that OMI will be a personal spiritual guide.  “Our mission is to make the world a happier place. Most Indians are spiritual and this presents us with a blue ocean opportunity,” he added.  He further added that the company’s aim is to improve the wellbeing of 10 Mn in the next five years. 

Since the onset of the pandemic, conversation on mental health has been happening at a much wider scale. As people continued to stay indoors, cutting ties from social interaction and working from home, awareness regarding mental health grew further. As per Kaiser Family Foundation’s  Health Tracking Poll from July 2020 found that many adults in the US are reporting negative impacts on their mental health and well-being, like difficulty in sleeping (36%),  eating (32%), increase in alcohol consumption or substance use (12%), and worsening chronic conditions (12%), due to worry and stress over the coronavirus.