Neuropilot - New Georgian Startup Introducing Method of Anxiety Management for Athletes
NeuroPilot is a newly-founded startup that introduces a unique method of anxiety management for professional athletes while using digital and virtual technologies.
CBW had an interview with one of its co-founders, Maia Tskitishvili.
"I have two decades of experience in psychotherapy, business psychology, sports psychology, and corporate training. In my own practice, cases of excessive anxiety and anxiety disorders average up to 90%.
Emotional disorders caused by anxiety have become the number one mental health problem of the 21st century, surpassing even depression in the world population. I would especially stress those professions that require a person to be in daily competition, be it the business sector, the performing arts, or professional sports. Excessive anxiety is often the cause of failure of people working in this field.
In terms of the high risk of receiving emotional and physical trauma, symptoms characteristic of anxiety appear, such as negative thoughts, fears, thinking about worst-case scenarios, overexertion of motor skills, etc."
She came up with the idea of creating a startup in 2020. As she noted, she was strongly influenced by the method that she discovered while working on herself in 2018 and has been using it effectively for five years to manage excessive anxiety with parents.
"One of the unique aspects of The Desire Therapy is that, by combining imaging techniques, neurophysiology, and quantum consciousness, it can be easily integrated into modern digital technologies such as mobile and virtual reality applications. Considering that our mind is able to travel in the virtual world, the latter becomes an easy and effective way to manage mental health problems in modern psychology."
Currently, Neuropilot is in a very interesting process.
"Neuropilot's success mainly depends on Nikoloz Gogochuri and Nika Rostomashvili, professionals working in virtual reality development. With their help and joint work, we were able to form a business idea that brought us success in the GITA competition.
The grant will allow us to create an application within which it will be probable for Desire Therapy to be integrated into virtual reality. With this app, we will be able to conduct the first experiments and prove that the method is also effective in VR in managing anxiety disorders. We will also develop a mobile application that will make our method even more accessible."
Tini Mamuchashvili, Nikoloz Gogochuri, Nika Rostomashvili, Ani Mamuchashvili, and Maia Tskitishvili are team members who create mobile and VR applications. They started working on the business idea in 2021 within the framework of the startup pre-accelerator of Impact Hub Tbilisi, in which Tini and Maia took part.
"Working with mentors and professionals resulted in the creation of the name NeuroPilot, its marketing, and branding."
After forming the idea, they soon became winners of the 2021 GITA Grants Competition, which was followed by the victory at GITA's 150k co-financing grant competition.
"At the final stage of GITA's 150K co-financing grant, as a result of 7 days of intensive training with international mentors in Tbilisi Technopark, we brought to completion the ambitious business plan of NeuroPilot. After the successful presentation of one of our team members, Ani Mamuchashvili, in front of the members of the international jury, we won the competition."
As for the target audience, according to her, professional athletes and their related organizations (teams, clubs, and federations) are the main clientage.
"First and foremost, we want to help them manage their anxiety disorders while using our app. We are gradually going to expand our target group in the direction of performance arts and e-sports. In the future, NeuroPilot's mobile and virtual reality applications for anxiety will be available to everyone. The concept and technical side of apps are created according to empirical research and conducting more than 500 sessions by me during the last 5 years."
Their future plans involve the further development of NeuroPilot and its entry into international markets such as the UK and the EU.