Headspace Health (Headspace) recently announced its acquisition of the award-winning Shine app for the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous (and) People of Color) community for an undisclosed sum.
What is Shine?
Shine is an inclusive app with over six million users and 45,000 paid subscribers. The app was founded in 2016 and provides a mental health and support platform to the BIPOC community.
Purchasing the Shine app strengthens Headspace’s offering to this underrepresented community – a vital component of its inclusivity strategy.
Shine has received numerous awards, including Apple’s Best of the Year in 2018 and 2020. Google also recognized the app in 2019. The company has also developed a Shine at Work platform to complement the app, which currently supports approximately 100 companies.
Integration
Long-term, Shine will merge into Headspace’s consumer and enterprise offerings. The app’s content will integrate into the main Headspace app and its ‘Leadership Workshop Series’.
This series is a newly launched initiative and education program for leaders to better equip and support mental health in the workplace. Some of Shine’s experienced team will join Headspace under the deal’s terms.
Russell Glass, CEO of Headspace, advised that,
“By integrating both the robust content and talented team from Shine, we’ll be able to collectively scale the diversity of offerings and experiences that we can bring to our customers and members.”
Headspace isn’t resting on its perch.
Headspace, the world’s leading provider of mental health solutions, remains focused on its strengths. It continues to strategically acquire assets to add to its content and grow beyond its100 million users worldwide. The company was valued at US$3 billion after its merger with Ginger, an on-demand mental health service provider, in August 2021.
Shine is Headspace’s second acquisition of 2022. In January, it acquired Sayana, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven mental health and wellness company. Sayana, a self-care app, helps users track habits and moods to understand their behavior and improve their wellbeing.
The app uses AI exercises, breathing techniques, and therapies such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance commitment therapy (ACT), and dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), supported by a chat-based function with the AI persona ‘Sayana’. This acquisition will help Headspace to personalize its user offering with AI and data combined.
In addition to its Leadership Workshop Series launch, on May 4th, 2022, Headspace announced a collaboration with Lucasfilm to develop content to help master sleep and stress. Characters and iconic locations from the ‘Star Wars’ movie series support the content delivery.
What’s next for Headspace?
Headspace is in a period of acquisition and internal consolidation, both internally and within the marketplace, post the COVID pandemic. However, its mission to transform healthcare to improve the health and happiness of the world is no mean task.
The need to navigate regulatory requirements and be viewed as an affordable and creditable alternative offering in the public and national health services remains a challenge. It must continue to evolve and refresh its content to personalize further and tailor its user experience to maintain its global dominance.
How Headspace measures its contribution to mental health and wellbeing remains in question. Its success will ultimately need to be measured in terms of prevention rather than business matrices. These matrices feel reactionary and in contradiction to Headspace’s mission and values.
