Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced the setting up of a National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (Nimhans) in north India, thus focussing attention on the growing conversation around mental health in the country.
The government will also upgrade the National Mental Health Institutes in Ranchi and Tezpur and redesignate them as Regional Apex Institutions.
“To give a fillip to our commitment to mental health and trauma care, and to ease the financial burden of medical emergencies on families, particularly the poor and vulnerable, we are undertaking targeted interventions across institutions, infrastructure, and the workforce,” Sitharaman said, while presenting her ninth consecutive budget in parliament.
So far, India has only one apex body, Nimhans, in Bengaluru, which was founded in 1847.
This comes just days after the Economic Survey 2025-26 flagged digital addiction — involving smartphones, social media, gaming, streaming, etc., — as an emerging risk hurting youth productivity and mental health, and even floated age-based access norms and a digital wellness curriculum in schools.
Mental health practitioners and startup founders have welcomed the government’s move to make mental healthcare more accessible.
“This is a big validation for the mental health startup industry, as the government has started talking about it. Till now, we were dependent on the south, but now that we’ll have a facility in the north, it’s definitely going to help the ecosystem,” said Anmol Arora, Founder at Y Combinator-backed Docvita, a mental health platform.
Further, this will help create a bigger talent pool in the industry. “As demand for mental healthcare is increasing in India, we need more trained professionals. In that regard, it is important to build institutions like Nimhans as they do the practical aspect of the training very well,” said Abhineet Kumar, chief executive and founder, Rocket Health.
However, experts have also said that the success of the new institution will depend on adapting to local needs instead of simply replicating Nimhans, Bengaluru.
“New centres will work only if they build their own local ecosystems and adapt to regional realities. Bengaluru’s strong mental health infrastructure exists largely because Nimhans helped develop that ecosystem here,” said Amit Malik, psychologist and founder of Amaha Health.
India’s toll-free mental health helpline, Tele-Manas, has received over 32.7 lakh calls since its inception in 2022, according to the platform’s data. Nimhans Bengaluru is the coordinating centre for this helpline.
Startup boom
The Indian startup ecosystem has expanded since the pandemic, attracting investors as platforms offering therapy, counselling, psychiatric consultation, and wellness tools scale up to meet demand and widening awareness.
According to data shared by Tracxn, there were 251 active mental health and wellness apps, websites, and platforms in India in 2020, and 410 in 2025. Industry experts state the growth is driven by increasing adoption of these apps by Gen Z users, especially after the pandemic.
Gen Z comprises about 40% of the users of the Bengaluru-based platform Rocket Health. For Mumbai-based Amaha Health, GenZ comprises 30% of its users.. Both platforms noted that there is faster adoption of their services among Gen Z.
To cater to this, mental health startups have started offering AI-powered options or tech solutions. For instance, Rocket Health offers voice journaling and Wysa has an AI-powered chatbot, while Shark Tank-fame MindPeers has gamified some of its mental wellness offerings.
