How Social Franchising Can Help Mental Health Businesses to Expand Their Reach

Franchising, as a business model, has worked for so many businesses, whether it’s about a small restaurant chain or a big hotel chain. But, can it work for a social cause like spreading awareness of mental health? Of course, it can!

In the world where sedentary lifestyles are prevailing and people are working under stress being far away from their loved ones, mental illnesses are likely to capture them. Considering this very fact, a handful of entrepreneurs have come forward to start their entrepreneurial ventures to combat the rising number of people facing mental health issues. Ventures like online counselling and mental health apps like YOURdost, Wysa, Innerhour, etc are contributing their fair share by helping out people. By applying franchising principles into their businesses, these mental health businesses can expand their reach to much more people.

Social Franchising: What It is All About

The concept of social franchising has recently taken the world by storm. Social franchising is the application of the principles of commercial franchising to promote social benefit rather than private profit. It helps in enabling social enterprises to reach as many consumers as they can through the cost-effective model of franchising.

In case of a healthcare-oriented social franchise, private providers are integrated into contractually obligated networks and subsequently trained and supported to provide healthcare services. In such networks, the outlets are operator owned while payments to the outlets are based on the services provided. The key objectives of social franchising are cost-effectiveness, equity, quality and market expansion.

Social Franchising For Mental Health Businesses

Mental health is one of the biggest concerns in today’s time, especially in India where 47% of the population suffers from mental illness. Though many new ventures have been started to fight this huge number, still, penetration to rural and remote areas is still very less.

Social franchising can help these small businesses to help reach out to more people. Social franchising for mental health businesses can be used by governments and aid-donors in developing countries like India where a substantial percentage of health services are provided by the private sector (and NGOs)