A Conversation That Began in Paris Continues in Mumbai: Infiheal Welcomes the Inria Team
A conversation that started in Paris found its natural next chapter in Mumbai last week, when Infiheal welcomed the Inria team to its office. Thomas Amand, who leads international partnerships at Inria with a focus on Asia, joined along with Philippe Gesnouin, Health Program Director at Inria. Having been in touch with Thomas since Infiheal's time in Paris, continuing that dialogue in Mumbai felt especially meaningful.
Alongside Founder and CEO Srishti Srivastava, Archie Mutta from the Partnerships team and Akruti M from the Psychology team joined the discussion, bringing perspectives from across the work Infiheal does at the intersection of AI, mental health, and responsible deployment.
About Inria
Inria is France's national research institute for digital science and technology, founded in 1967 and widely regarded as the intellectual engine of France's AI ambitions. Created with the founding mission of producing world-class research in computer science and mathematics and translating that research into real-world impact, Inria today coordinates key elements of France's national AI strategy under France 2030, including the PEPR IA research programme and multiple industrial research partnerships.
Inria's international footprint is equally significant. It leads a Centre of Expertise for International Cooperation in AI, supported by the French ministries for research, the economy, and foreign affairs, and operates as part of a multidisciplinary network of nearly 150 international experts working on economic and societal challenges posed by AI. In February 2026, in the presence of President Macron, Inria and India's Department of Science and Technology formalised the creation of a Franco-Indian Binational Centre for Digital Science and Technology, underscoring the deepening research relationship between both countries. Inria's ambition, articulated at the launch, was to translate this partnership into tangible impact for research, innovation, and society, in collaboration with leading academic and research institutions in both countries.
For an AI mental health company working at the intersection of clinical rigour and responsible deployment, an engagement with Inria carries weight that goes beyond networking. Inria's work on trustworthy AI, including explainability, fairness, and robustness, and its dedicated focus on AI for health, maps closely onto the questions Infiheal navigates every day in building Healo.
Two Ecosystems, One Shared Set of Questions
The conversation ranged across the Indian and European innovation ecosystems, and what it genuinely takes to translate research and technology into solutions that can be responsibly deployed, reach people at scale, and create meaningful real-world impact.
What stood out was the opportunity to examine these questions from two distinct but complementary ecosystem perspectives. France brings a strong research and scientific innovation environment, with deep institutional frameworks for AI governance and a track record of rigorous, evidence-led development. India brings something different but equally important: the experience of building for scale, accessibility, and extraordinary diversity of user needs, often under significant resource constraints, in ways that force a different kind of creative discipline.
There is a great deal of common ground between these two perspectives, particularly when the domain in question is mental health, where getting the science right and reaching the people who need it are both non-negotiable, and where the gap between the two remains one of the defining challenges of the field.
Culture as Context
Towards the end of the visit, the team took Thomas around the Les Tresors gallery, where Infiheal's Mumbai office is located. It was a quiet but fitting way to bring the conversation from the world of technology and research back to the culture and context in which the work is being built. The gallery as a setting is not incidental to how Infiheal thinks about its work: mental health is deeply human, deeply contextual, and building for it well requires keeping that context in view.
Infiheal is grateful to Thomas and Philippe for taking the time and looks forward to continuing the conversation and exploring what lies ahead.
