The Founder Who Coded Her Way Out: Inkar Kenzhessarina on Daisy and AI for Mental Health

Inkar Kenzhessarina didn't set out to build a mental health startup. With a background in international relations and law, founding a company was never the plan, until burnout and clinical depression during her master's in Sweden made it impossible to ignore the gap between people who need mental health support and people who can actually access it.

Daisy, the AI platform she went on to build, is an attempt to close that gap. It runs on transparency, so users know they're talking to a chatbot. Anonymity, so there's no human waiting on the other end and no judgement. And clear ethical guardrails, including automatic redirection to crisis services when a user shows signs of being in danger.

In this episode of AI for Equity, Inkar joins Jenny Garrett OBE and Leah Garrett to talk about:

• The pivot from law to founder, and why personal pain became professional purpose
• How she taught herself to code and built an MVP from scratch
• What early users are actually doing with Daisy, versus what she expected
• The cultural stigma around mental health in Kazakhstan, and how AI shifts the equation
• The ethical complexities of building AI that holds people in their hardest moments
• What transparency and safeguarding look like when the user on the other end is vulnerable

If you're interested in AI applied to wellbeing, in founder stories that begin in personal crisis, or in what ethical design looks like in mental health tech, this one is for you.

Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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