Harshit Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of AletheiaMind, a startup gearing to develop a gamified AI enabled mental health tracking and coaching application, alongside a line of physical wellbeing oriented products, starting with guided journals. Harshit has historically been identified as an outlier, and while it initially felt debilitating, he has grown to break out of the box of negative connotations it usually entails. Whether it stemmed from the “abnormal” curveballs that persistently plagued domestic bliss through his formative years - starting with dysfunctional family dynamics leading to his parents’ separation at the tender age of 5 -, or just a peculiar perceptive viewpoint, Harshit’s insatiable desire to gain deeper insight into himself (and subsequently the world around him) equipped him with a particularly unquenchable inquisitiveness to dissect the micro and macro level functioning of normative systems and processes he bore witness to. The incessant “Why” never ceased to irk teachers, family, and peers alike - ranging from “Are these theories truly applicable if the markets are never in a state of ceteris paribus?” to “How are monetary acts of devotion going to secure heavenly sanctuary post a departure from our physical forms?” What most mistook for a problem with authority, Harshit can now - with the benefit of hindsight - claim was a passion to learn to optimally navigate the maze of life. Picasso famously advised to learn the rules like a pro so one might break them like an artist - if the nature of all things worldly is dynamic, why should our mental models for interacting with and existing in the same be rigid like scripture?
Having been privy to the Cambridge International Examination system of education where students are free to choose cross disciplinary subjects transcending typical “stream” selection involved with the Indian education system, he continued building an interdisciplinary lens through highschool - swapping Physics with History in his IGCSEs, and opting for a truly curious amalgam of Biology, Psychology, Economics, Mathematics, and English Language during A Levels - spanning life, behavioural, and social sciences. While most geared for vocational undergraduate degrees at the drop of a hat, Harshit formally cemented his affair with the interdisciplinary method when opting for a Liberal Arts education. This afforded him exposure to the breadth and depth of academia traversing disciplines like Philosophy, Behavioural Economics, Design Thinking, and Anthropology, with numerous Psychology centric electives as part of his major, which also incorporated practical training. Having been a stakeholder to the traditional patient-therapist model on both sides of the table, and corroborated with academic journals outlining the real world challenges and implications of the conventional ‘appointment first, rectification later’ system, Harshit opted for an MSc in Health Psychology over the party favourite clinical route. While supply for trained clinicians had been exploding relative to historic trends, outcomes were not significantly improved by solely addressing this one vital leakage in the ecosystem.
To Harshit, the emerging need for developing applications of psychology eclipsing practitioner facilitated talk, somatic, and pharmaceutical modalities seemed prudent, particularly given the recent advancements in biopsychosocial conceptualisation of mental health. Leveraging the diverse educational foundation he built to critically engage with Psychology through a holistic lens allowed him to contextualise authentic pain points within a broader framework, including identifying the evolution of systematic issues that pervaded practice. Building on the theoretical outlook he acquired, utilising his experience as a teaching assistant to NHS psychological wellbeing practitioners, in tandem with his formal training, enabled him to synergise multidirectional takeaways, channeling them into a problem solving approach that aims to address the barriers to entry surrounding seeking psychological help. Fusing his combination skillset as a high level generalist and specialist, and employing it as a staunch proponent of the ideology that health - both physical and mental - is one’s greatest asset, Harshit has set out to proliferate evidence based complementary and alternative self regulation techniques that empower individuals to proactively and strategically manage that most precious feeling - being in alignment with oneself. Sustainable mental fitness should not exclusively require clinic visits or an MSc to understand and execute. Harshit isn’t trying to disrupt, rather, help gradually pivot to a consumerist culture that propagates a conceptual evolution whereby investments in mental wellbeing are as instrumental to a fulfilling life as securing optimal returns on financial ones.
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