All Work And No Play Is No Way To Thrive

Arianna Huffington’s wellness platform Thrive Global wants to help India battle the stress and burnout epidemic at the workplace.

- Jui Mukherjee

THRIVE GLOBAL FOUNDER Arianna Huffington calls the common belief ‘Burnout is the price one pays for success’ a delusion. The founder of the wellness platform learnt it the hard way herself. In 2007, two years after she founded media organisation The Huffington Post, she collapsed at her desk due to exhaustion from lack of sleep. She has since talked about how The Huffington Post—which she quit in 2016 to start Thrive Global—started to grow its influence and readership because of better decisions she took after she began to take care of herself. It is easy to see why Thrive Global’s raison d’être is to spread the word on how working around the clock is not the best way to succeed and help people live their lives with less stress.

Last year, Thrive Global began its India operations in January and launched its media platform in October. India is the first country it has expanded to since its launch in the U.S. The timing could not be more apt. According to a recent report by the World Health Organization, 6.5% of the population in India suffers from some form of mental disorder. It has a suicide rate of 10.9 for every 100,000 people. A major cause of mental health issues such as depression, burnout, and anxiety among young Indians is work-related stress.