How This AI-Powered Clinic Is Helping 4 Lakh Indian Women Access Gynaec Care Without Shame

Imagine a world where healthcare feels as easy and comfortable as chatting with a friend. Where you’re treated with warmth and understanding, not judgment or anxiety. While technology makes groceries arrive in minutes and approvals instantaneous, women’s healthcare — especially gynaecological care — often remains a maze of waiting rooms, clinical silences, and unanswered questions.

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To transform this reality, Pinky Promise was created in 2022 as a chat-first women’s healthcare platform. The vision? To make gynaecological care approachable, private, and free of judgment. 

With real doctors behind the screens and a design built on trust and empathy, Pinky Promise is redefining what women’s healthcare can feel like.

A new way to deliver care  

At the heart of Pinky Promise lies a beautifully simple idea: healthcare works better when it feels like a conversation, not a transaction.

“We wanted to create a space where care feels safer — like talking to your confidential best friend,” tells Divya Kamerkar(34), CEO and co-founder of Pinky Promise, to The Better India. 

For Divya, this isn’t just clever branding. It’s a fundamental rethinking of gynaecological care, inspired by her own experience with PCOS (Polycystic Ovary Syndrome). 

“Going to a gynaecologist should feel like they’re giving you a Pinky Promise,” she explains. “It should feel like they’re saying, ‘I’m here for you, I’ll listen, and I won’t judge. You can tell me anything.’”

Unlike traditional healthcare platforms, Pinky Promise doesn’t rely on telemedicine through video or voice calls. Rather, it is built as a chat-first interface — just like texting a friend or sending messages on WhatsApp. This approach prioritises comfort and discretion, making it easier for women to share details about intimate health concerns, even in environments where privacy is limited.

The women behind the vision  

Pinky Promise is powered by two women whose journeys into healthcare may seem worlds apart, but ultimately converge in their shared passion for systemic change.

Divya, a Yale-trained biologist, grew up navigating her own health challenges with PCOS. While at Yale, Divya pursued public health and health systems work, tackling issues like gender-based violence and stigma in HIV care across Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Her work led to initiatives like night clinics, which let women access discreet care — a successful model that scaled across six countries. Later, she worked with the Delhi government post-Nirbhaya case in 2012, contributing to women’s safety programs and the establishment of Mohalla Clinics. 

Between 2019 and 2021, Divya completed her MBA at the Wharton School of Business. It was during this period — as COVID hit, life moved online, and she was pregnant — that the idea for Pinky Promise truly crystallised. 

Misdiagnoses, unnecessary medications, and delayed care made her question why healthcare lagged so far behind other sectors. That’s when she made the call to drop consulting opportunities and build Pinky Promise.

Meanwhile, Akanksha Vyas(36), co-founder and CTO of Pinky Promise, comes from a strong technology background. A computer science graduate, she began her career as an early engineering team member at several startups before founding her own medical 3D printing company. There, she built AI-powered systems for mass-customised medical wearables. The product was tested and rolled out across parts of Europe, including the Netherlands and Turkey.

“Healthcare and startups have always been my space,” she says, noting that Pinky Promise is her second venture as a founder and fourth as a founding CTO.

When her consulting work brought her to Pinky Promise, Akanksha hesitantly tested the platform for a health concern she had planned to self-medicate. To her surprise, the experience completely transformed her perception.

 “In ten minutes, I had medicine in hand. It de-escalated my anxiety, and I finally got a correct diagnosis — for the first time in 15 years!”

From then on, Akanksha joined forces with Divya, bringing her tech expertise to help build a first-of-its-kind digital healthcare platform.

How Pinky Promise works: Starting with a chat, not a clinic

While most digital healthcare products focus on telemedicine, Pinky Promise took a bold risk: What if care began through chat?

“Women naturally prefer messaging when communicating with doctors,” Divya explains. 

“We text, we share voice notes. But no one had built a doctor-led chat-first healthcare system before.”

Instead of chatbots or automated responses, Pinky Promise provides real conversations with doctors over chat — combining discretion, emotional comfort, and effective care. 

The platform operates strictly in accordance with Indian telemedicine practice guidelines. If medical protocols indicate that an in-person consultation is necessary, doctors immediately recommend a physical visit. Certain medicines that cannot legally be prescribed online are never issued through the app. In cases where a doctor feels more comfortable recommending in-person evaluation, that advice is prioritised.

The chat-first approach proved groundbreaking, especially for sensitive topics like contraception, sexual health, or intimate symptoms. 

In 2022, before there was an app or a brand, Divya became the product.

“I was literally pretending to be a chatbot on WhatsApp and Facebook groups,” she laughs. “That was the cutest thing in the world.”

She would ask structured questions, respond like a system, and observe how women reacted. Would they answer honestly? Would they engage? Would they trust a chat interface with deeply personal information?

The answer came quickly and clearly.

With consent, the team followed up with phone calls, asking the same questions verbally. The difference was striking. “We realised they were actually more honest on chat compared to the call,” Divya says.

By mid-2023, the platform moved decisively from being informational to becoming a full care journey — where doctors, technology, and ongoing conversations came together.

“From 2022 to 2023, we were experimenting constantly,” Divya says. “First, as a chatbot. Then as an app. Then testing where care actually needed to begin — and where it needed to continue.”

When women started completing the full loop — chatting, consulting, following prescriptions, and feeling better — the team knew they had arrived at something real.

Technology at the core

Pinky Promise is built as a chat-first platform, and every technology choice reflects that intent. Google DialogFlow powers the conversational backbone, while Flutter enables a seamless cross-platform experience across devices. 

For medical intelligence, the team does not rely solely on generic medical LLMs, recognising early on that women’s health cannot be treated as a subset of general medicine. Instead, they are training their own models for medical decision-making, designed specifically for women’s bodies and contexts. They use LLM's as a language layer to truly customise the experience of each patient.

LLM's help them provide instant, empathetic responses for users. They have built a RAG-based copilot that assists doctors by learning their individual communication styles, ensuring conversations retain a personal touch. Multilingual support, especially for mixed English–vernacular inputs typed in Roman script, is a major focus. Today the app is available in Hinglish along with English, and they are expanding beyond that.

Given the sensitive nature of women’s health data, privacy and security are central to the platform’s design. All patient data is stored in an encrypted cloud database, encrypted both at rest (AES-256 encryption) and in transit (TLS 1.2+ protocol). Conversations on the platform are fully encrypted.

Only the consulting doctor has access to a patient’s medical records. Patients also retain full control over their data and can request permanent deletion at any time, which is processed within 24 hours.

The AI system assists doctors with symptom triaging, creating a diagnoses and detailed prescription, and drafting responses to follow-up chats. While it works with live patient data, the models are built and hosted in-house under strict privacy safeguards. No data leaves Pinky Promise’s servers or is shared with third parties, and any information used to train AI systems is fully anonymised, with personally identifiable and medical data removed.

Reflecting on how quickly it all came together, Divya says, “Akanksha and I went on this insane sprint. Akanksha wrote more than 20,000–30,000 lines of code in a span of about three and a half months. March to April 2024 was when the app you see today was actually launched — on the App Store, Play Store, and as a web app as well.”

The Doctors behind the screen

Technology may be the backbone, but care remains deeply human. Today, Pinky Promise has four doctors working across shifts, supported by senior gynaecologists for complex cases, with a nutritionist and therapists being onboarded. A vetted roster of 50–60 doctors stands ready to scale. “They’re trained on our technology, and they help us build it,” says Divya.

All consultations on Pinky Promise are conducted exclusively by registered gynaecologists with valid medical licences. Their Medical Registration Number (MRN) is visible at the time of booking and included on every prescription. 

Only qualified doctors are authorised to issue prescriptions on the platform, and no medical information is ever shared with a patient unless it comes directly from the doctor.

Dr Pooja Jain, 33, a registered gynaecologist associated with Pinky Promise, believes the platform has expanded access to care in meaningful ways.

“Pinky Promise has enabled me to consult patients from across India — many of whom might never have visited a gynaecologist otherwise,” she says. “Earlier in my practice, a significant amount of time would go into administrative work — maintaining files, drafting prescriptions, and documentation. With digital systems streamlining that process, I’m able to focus more on clinical decision-making, counselling, and understanding the patient holistically.”

She adds that while technology plays an important role, it must be used responsibly. 

“AI can be a valuable support tool in healthcare — especially for improving efficiency and consistency — but it works best when guided carefully by medical judgement.”

Building trust in a disconnected system

One of Pinky Promise’s biggest challenges was convincing people to trust an entirely digital care pathway. The hurdles were significant, Divya shares that over 50% of users had never visited a gynaecologist before, and more than 70% had never paid for an online service or followed a digital prescription.

Despite these obstacles, the team focused on building trust one user at a time. Early users received free consultations, and every woman who joined the platform was asked for detailed feedback. 

Design played a pivotal role in easing first-time users into the platform. “A woman often comes in angry and anxious,” Divya explains. “She needs to feel immediately comforted and cared for. Only then will she trust us with her health.”

The team is also clear about the limits of digital care. If a user reports emergency or red-flag symptoms, the system flags them immediately and counsels the patient to visit the nearest hospital or clinic. Pinky Promise does not provide emergency treatment — its role in such cases is rapid triage and directing women to appropriate in-person facilities.

Scaling Impact: From experiments to life-changing results

Today, Pinky Promise serves over 400,000 active users. Women from across India access its services with just an internet connection — even in low-connectivity or remote regions, from Kashmir to the Northeast, where basic internet is available, care remains within reach.

Consultations on the platform are priced at Rs 99, making gynaecological advice significantly more accessible than traditional clinic visits. 

Nearly 30% of the women who come to Pinky Promise are managing chronic conditions such as PCOS or endometriosis, often after years of difficult health journeys. To support them, we’ve built long-term, tech-enabled care programmes that go beyond one-time consultations. Through our digital platform, women receive continuous medical guidance, personalised treatment plans, regular follow-ups, and specialist access — ensuring consistent care even in an online setting.

Last year, five women who had struggled to conceive — some after failed IVF cycles — went through our structured programme and successfully became mothers, highlighting how sustained, technology-driven care can support complex fertility challenges.

Over time, Pinky Promise scaled into a fully integrated care journey. Women now complete the entire process online — chatting with doctors, receiving personalised prescriptions, and feeling genuinely better.

In women’s own words: What users say

Aparajita, 26, a lawyer based in Mumbai, turned to Pinky Promise because traditional healthcare felt inaccessible.

“Doctors don’t sit at convenient times, and spending Rs 2,000 just for a consultation doesn’t always make sense.”

What reassured her most was the absence of judgment and the continuity of care.

“They actually come back and ask — did it work? Are you better?”

For her, Pinky Promise became a safe, confidential space where she felt heard and respected.

Similarly, Disha, 24, a psychologist, had lived with PCOS since adolescence and had tried multiple treatment paths without success. “It was affordable, anonymous, and I didn’t have to leave my house.”

Over two years of care, she began experiencing regular cycles and appreciated the platform’s focus on listening, lifestyle changes, and minimal dependence on medication.

“For the first time, I felt reassured that someone was actually listening.”

Looking forward: A promise kept  

For the founders, Pinky Promise is more than a healthcare platform — it’s deeply personal. Divya reflects on her hopes for her daughter’s future: “I want her to grow up in a world where accessing gynaecological care feels normal, simple, and safe.”

Akanksha envisions a healthcare system that is proactive, accessible, and empowering for every woman. “Healthcare should be designed on your terms — not anyone else’s.”

At its heart, Pinky Promise is about breaking barriers, rewriting norms, and delivering care with trust, respect, and compassion. Just like the name suggests, it’s a promise women can count on. And with every chat, prescription, and life changed, the team continues to keep that promise.

All images courtesy Divya Kamerkar

Sources:

Pinky Promise