Hey! We’re Aaruni and Pranathi, the co-founders of Plia Therapy, and we thought it was time we properly introduced ourselves.
Below are a few (random) pictures of us over the past five years, so you can put a face to these names.
It all started in the autumn of 2020, at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both Pranathi and I had only just graduated from high school, ready to start our first year of university as Biomedical Engineers at Imperial College London. Unable to attend university in person, we first met for an online introductory group assignment and bonded over dogs, our shared values, and how shy and awkward we both were.
Fast forward a few months, and we decided to be flatmates for our second year. It made sense - we’re both definitely on the scale of having some sort of cleanliness-related OCD 😅. From 4 am conversations with our friends to all-nighters for uni coursework, we complemented each other and made the most of being college students in a new country.
One of our projects, DinoMaze, in particular, was very close to our hearts. We had collaborated with an occupational therapist from the Pace Centre UK and worked intensively on developing an educational, Augmented Reality (AR) game for kids with cerebral palsy in the winter of 2022. We enjoyed building this game for kids so much: it was meaningful, hands-on, and exactly the kind of impact we both cared about.
However, university got hard, and we both got placements in 2 different countries:Â I was in the US, playing with EEG headsets and VR, while Pranathi was tinkering with medical imaging ML pipelines in Oxford. We talked almost every week, and thought about building DinoMaze into a bigger venture, but our lack of experience and the presence of competition discouraged us.
Once we were both back in London for our final year of college, we found ourselves going to the same events for startups: The Tech Bros, Imperial’s Enterprise Lab, and more. It felt like a sign from the universe! Surely, we could build something big together. We started brainstorming ideas, from FemTech to Baymax; we were ready for anything. But then we remembered how much we had enjoyed building this game for kids, and I have always had a passion for neuroscience. So, we thought, "Let’s build for them." And there you have it, the birth of PLIA!
