At Jivika, we support the often-overlooked mental health of cancer caregivers—those on the frontlines of patient care. Our mobile app delivers quick, daily micro-habits and expert coaching to help caregivers manage stress and avoid burnout. By improving caregiver well-being, we enhance the quality of care patients receive. With your support, we can make mental wellness a standard part of the cancer care journey.
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Behind every cancer patient is a caregiver—whether a professional provider or a loving family member—quietly carrying an immense emotional burden. Yet, their mental health often goes unnoticed. In fact, up to 70% of cancer caregivers experience serious symptoms of depression, and nearly a third meet the criteria for major depressive disorder.
Caregiver burnout doesn’t just hurt the caregiver—it affects the quality of care and emotional support patients receive, which can impact treatment success. Sadly, there’s still no standard mental health support built into cancer care for these unsung heroes.
That’s where Jivika comes in.
We’re reimagining support for caregivers with a proactive, science-backed solution. Through short, daily micro-habits (each under a minute!) delivered through our app—and paired with personalized micro-coaching—we help caregivers manage stress, build resilience, and feel seen. No overwhelm, no heavy lifting—just wellness that fits into their lives, right when they need it most.
By supporting caregiver well-being, we help ensure patients receive more compassionate, consistent, and high-quality care. Our vision? To make mental wellness for cancer caregivers a core part of the care journey—not an afterthought.
At Jivika, we’re on a mission to support the mental health of cancer caregivers—and with your help, we’re ready to scale our impact.
Smarter Support with AI
We’re building an AI-powered system that helps prevent caregiver burnout before it starts. By analyzing biometric and psychometric data, we can personalize micro-coaching for each caregiver, giving them the right support at the right moment. Your support can help us bring this innovative, preventive care to life.
Expanding Our Reach
To bring Jivika to more caregivers, we plan to grow our team with experienced sales, marketing, and advertising professionals. We’ll start by expanding through oncology departments at key partner institutions—beginning with Rush—and collaborate with national organizations like the NCI, COA, CancerCare, and the American Cancer Society. We’re also working to integrate Jivika into widely used hospital wellness platforms like Virgin Pulse.
Here’s how your contribution will help:
AI Developer ($160,000): To create our predictive micro-coaching engine using wearable and wellness data.
Sales Director ($120,000): To grow partnerships across hospitals, cancer centers, and caregiver organizations.
Advertising ($50,000): For conference outreach and awareness-building in the healthcare space.
Marketing ($30,000): For a 6-month project to develop a smart, scalable marketing strategy.
With your support, we can reach more caregivers, earlier—and give them the mental health support they deserve.
We’re actively raising $3 million through SAFE investments, with a $15 million valuation cap, to help us grow and scale Jivika’s impact. In parallel, once we secure funding through Music Beats Cancer, we plan to apply for additional research funding in Q4 2025 to further study how our intervention supports caregiver wellness. This will build on our promising, peer-reviewed pilot study, which was already approved by an IRB. We’re excited to keep pushing the science forward—and with your support, we can make it happen.
If Jivika were to disappear into the all-too-common “Valley of Death” funding gap, the impact would go far beyond caregiver mental health—it would ripple across the entire cancer care system, affecting patient survival, recovery, and the stability of care delivery. Caregivers—both family members and professionals—are not just support systems; they are essential to treatment success. Research shows that when caregivers feel overwhelmed, cancer patients are more likely to experience worse outcomes, including shorter survival. Yet today, up to 70% of cancer caregivers suffer from serious depression, and many are burning out—leading to higher ER visits, reduced treatment adherence, and costly complications.
Jivika is one of the few scalable, evidence-based solutions proven to reverse this trend. At hospitals like Cleveland Clinic, we’ve reduced caregiver burnout by 70% and helped eliminate professional attrition entirely. If we lose Jivika now, we risk deepening the caregiver crisis and leaving cancer patients without the critical emotional and practical support they need. With cancer care already costing the U.S. over $200 billion annually, and rising, our healthcare system can’t afford to ignore this growing gap. Supporting Jivika means supporting survivorship, resilience, and the people who make healing possible. This isn’t just an investment in technology—it’s a commitment to the future of cancer care.
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Ayman Mukerji, Neuroimmunology Researcher, Therapist, and Founder of Jivika
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Articles published in Scientific/Medical Journals: Di Martino, A., Choi, E. Y., Jones, R. M., Castellanos, F. X., & Mukerji, A. (2016). Imaging the striatum in autism spectrum disorder (pp. 189-218). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Househam, A. M., Peterson, C. T., Mills, P. J., & Chopra, D. (2017). The effects of stress and meditation on the immune system, human microbiota, and epigenetics. Adv Mind Body Med, 31(4), 10-25.
Househam, A. M., & Solanto, M. V. (2016). Mindfulness as an intervention for ADHD. The ADHD Report, 24(2), 1-9.
Mukerji Househam, A., & Josipovic, Z. (2015). Commentary: Meditation Effects within the Hippocampal Complex Revealed by Voxel-Based Morphometric and Cytoarchitectonic Probabilistic Mapping. Frontiers in psychology, 6, 1765.
Mukerji, A. (2023). Epigenetics of Stress and Mindfulness ; Elsevier Publications
Mukerji, A., Doty J., Kuntz T. (2024).Meta-analysis and systematic review of gut microbiome signatures of mental illnesses ; Manuscript submission to Nature
Published patents: N/A
CEO & Founder
Ayman used to be a Wall Street executive (MD at JP Morgan). Following an abusive relationship that nearly killed her, she started practicing mindfulness. Life improved. So she went to NYU to become a Social Worker and Neuroimmunology researcher. Her colleagues at Langone wanted her to teach burnout reduction. That was the birth of Jivika.
Chief Technology Officer
Manas Mandal is the CTO of Jivika, bringing over two decades of global experience in building and scaling enterprise software. He has led two successful software ventures and held senior technology roles at Interra and IBM. Manas combines deep technical expertise with strategic leadership across delivery, quality, and business development. He holds a Master’s in Statistics and a Fellowship in Management from IIM Ahmedabad. Based in Kolkata, he’s a hands-on leader with a passion for innovation, global markets, and the occasional street food discovery. Manas’ location creates advantage for Jivika’s development work – development happening round the clock.
UX/UI Lead
Tracy Li is a product and UX designer whose work spans AI, digital health, and consumer platforms—making her an instrumental force in shaping Jivika’s user-first, high-retention product experience. With a Master’s in Integrated Design & Media from NYU and a background in Global Business and Digital Arts from the University of Waterloo, Tracy brings a rare combination of design, strategy, and cross-functional execution. Her portfolio includes AI-powered learning platforms, enterprise moderation tools, and e-commerce ecosystems. At AskSia and UrsaTech, she led UX for subscription growth, onboarding, and designing systems from scratch. Her human-centered, data-informed design approach ensures that Jivika remains intuitive, inclusive, and sticky—even for time-strapped caregivers.
Tracy represents the design and user engagement muscle that helps Jivika convert evidence-based science into habit-forming, scalable tech.
$25 donated by Laura Morrison
