37. Walking on Earth – tackling stress through micro moments of recovery

Founder: Reeva Misra
Year founded: 2020
Website: walkingonearth.com

Walking on Earth (WONE) founder Reeva Mistra is candid about her motivation to launch the business. “”We have normalised a society where the majority of people are suffering dangerous levels of workplace stress,” Misra tells us.

Research conducted by Misra’s company in 2023 found that 38% of employees experience daily chronic stress. The cumulative effects of this can be burnout and longer term illness. And with that comes a direct financial impact for employers and economies. Work-related stress is estimated to cost the UK economy £28bn a year in sick days.

Existing solutions treat employees after an issue exists, when their performance, and therefore the business, is already suffering. “I created WONE to tackle this problem,” Misra enthuses. “By taking preventative action, we build more resilient workforces who are better able to cope with rising levels of demands, improving individual health and performance.”

WONE is, at its most basic description, an AI-powered stress coach. It’s available as an app that helps employees regulate their stress levels with micro moments of recovery during the working day. 

The service is made available to employers whose teams may be at risk of quiet burnout, and it provides ‘in-the-moment’ interventions to proactively address workplace stress and employee wellbeing.

“We work with US and UK enterprise businesses, predominantly in the technology and professional services industries,” Misra tells us. “These are client-service, high-pressure, target and deadline driven industries, which all experience significant levels of stress.” 

Speaking of stress, it’s something Misra has had to tackle herself when starting her business in the toughest of economic moments. “”I founded WONE in February 2020 – directly before the pandemic hit. The biggest challenge was managing the uncertainty faced not just for ourselves but also for our target customers – enterprise businesses.”

Misra navigated this painful period and has managed to capture some serious attention for her early-stage business. It now has had £7.6m in angel investment and private equity funding, and has numerous advisors on board, including Arianna Huffington.

Perhaps even more encouragingly for Misra and her core business mission, users are seeing results. “Our research confirmed that 74% report a reduction in their stress levels, and 90% report a positive impact on productivity.” 

Over the next five years, Misra is planning to scale the impact of the WONE platform, and use its rich dataset to invest into research that better understands the link between stress and chronic disease. She hopes to see the business expand beyond enterprise clients to be the go-to solution for managing stress, used by schools, healthcare professionals, corporates and the public sector.