Sançar Sahin is the co-founder and CMO of Oliva, a startup providing personalised workplace mental health support.
The Oliva platform gives employees on-demand, specialist mental health support. The service matches therapists with employees based on their individual needs and is active in over 70 countries. It is paid for by employers, with Oliva’s customers including Marshmallow and Leapsome.
Sahin, who has a background in marketing at startups including Typeform and Hotjar, founded Oliva in 2020 after experiencing burnout and a lack of work-life boundaries during his early career.
The London-headquartered company, which was co-founded by Javier Suarez, secured £4.84m in a seed funding round in March 2022. Prior to that, it scooped over £2m in pre-seed funding.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, the Oliva CMO explains why therapy shouldn’t just be a perk, shares tips for promoting workplace diversity and reveals why he’s sceptical of AI chatbots replacing therapists....