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Meditopia

Meditopia raises $15m to bring personalised mindfulness to billions of people

Posted: 16 July, 2020
  • One in four of us will be affected by mental and neurological disorders in our lifetimes, with the UN warning we’re in the midst of a mental health crisis

  • Meditation and mindfulness apps are one of the fastest-growing services in this sector

  • Meditopia takes a highly localised approach with each of its wellness programmes, tailoring them to the needs of individual cultures and languages

  • Building on the idea that how your mind works is tied to who you are, the language you speak and your culture, Meditopia offers bespoke, personalised services

  • It is live in 75 countries and has coached more than 14 million members

  • The Turkish-German firm has now raised $15m, co-led by Creandum and Highland Europe, to further this expansion and its services

16th July 2020: Meditopia – the most widely used and downloaded mental coach in non-English speaking markets – has today announced a Series A investment of $15M co-led by Creandum, Europe’s leading early-stage venture capital firm and early backer of Spotify, iZettle, and Klarna, and Highland Europe, the European growth investor behind matchesfashion.com, Zwift and Wolt.

With a presence in Istanbul and Berlin, Meditopia is helping to address the growing global mental health crisis through its highly-tailored, localized, long-term range of mental wellbeing programs. Meditopia works with trained professionals in each of its 75 regions to develop bespoke plans which are tailored to the specific and nuanced needs of that culture, language or country.

Until now, most meditation and mental health apps were built and written to largely suit the needs of English-speaking, Western groups, making them less useful for other demographics from different cultures and countries. Meditopia believes that cultural differences in the way topics like sexuality are perceived around the world, mean that mental wellness services should provide resources or approaches that are designed for that culture.

Our mental wellbeing is deeply rooted in our culture and the events happening around us, the way we speak, people we interact with, the community we live in, politics and so on
— Berk Yilmaz, Co-Founder

“These are the main factors that affect our peace. Therefore mental wellness needs to be handled locally, personalized to our local needs and culture.” Berk Yilmaz continues.

Since launching in 2017, Meditopia has created an unrivalled collection of resources, offering the most programs in the most languages – almost 3,000 pieces of content in 10 languages – than any other mindfulness and mental wellness platform globally.

Meditopia employs therapists, psychologists, meditation experts, and writers from each region to create highly-tailored content designed around specific themes or in response to global or regional events. An example includes contents created before and after Brazil’s Rio Carnavale in which Meditopia used the platform to coach people through managing their emotions around the disastrous flooding that was simultaneously taking place during this cultural event.

Through its agile, mental coaching approach, these programs combine the benefits of a deep-dive mindfulness experience with comprehensive tools designed to meet the short to long-term needs of the mind. In three years, Meditopia has grown to 14M users across 75 countries and has experienced 10x year-on-year growth in sales.

From the beginning, Meditopia has strived to be at the frontier of the mind, taking a unique and customised approach to every country, culture, and language that it serves.
— Fatih Celebi, Co-Founder and CEO

“Sources of stress and anxiety may be universal, however the way they are discussed and perceived is often very specific to each culture, country, or language.” Fatih continues: “We don’t believe there is a one-size-fits-all solution to mental health and with Meditopia we’re helping to provide for the long-term deeply personal, complex needs of people across the globe.”

The latest Series A investment of $15M was co-led by Creandum and Highland Europe. Carl Fritjofsson of Creandum and Fergal Mullen of Highland Europe will join Meditopia’s Board of Directors.

Co-Founder Ali Murat said: “Mental wellness is something everyone should be able to achieve, regardless of their country of origin, native language, socio-economic status, ethnicity, or religion. We first focused our efforts on our home country Turkey before expanding worldwide so whether you are Latino, Japanese, Russian, North American, or Arab, you can find support and coaching in our global community.”

Carl Fritjofsson, Partner at Creandum said: “The social media age we have experienced enabled users an endless focus on others. We’re now experiencing a new wave of technology which allows users to turn their focus inwards on themselves. We’ve followed Meditopia for the past two years and have been incredibly impressed by how they’ve been able to capture this opportunity across the world, all while being one of the most capital-efficient run companies around.”

Fergal Mullen, Founding Partner at Highland Europe said: “The coronavirus pandemic has thrown mental health into stark view but there has been a mental health crisis bubbling under the surface for decades. For too long, the technology available was created for English-speaking groups alone. Meditopia provides the alternative; a solution that helps its members get to the heart of what they need in a way that suits them. We’re thrilled to be a part of getting this vital service to those people.”