Before Untaboo Treated a Single Patient, Its Founders Spent Months Posing as Patients Themselves

VMPL

Chandigarh [India], August 21: A year ago, two siblings were having dinner at the Mumbai home of a well-known sexologist and family friend when his phone rang. Within moments he was on his feet, reaching for his coat, ready to walk out mid-meal.

As he left, he turned to his wife and said the patient on the other end of the line had been about to take his own life. The condition the patient was struggling with was erectile dysfunction.

For Vanshdeep Arora and his sister, Dr. Vanshikha Arora, that dinner did not end the way it began. Until that evening, they had thought of sexual health as a purely medical subject. The phone call showed them everything that sits around it: the fear, the shame, the silence.

"That one call made us realise that sexual-health concerns can cause far more distress than most people imagine," says Vanshdeep Arora, Co-Founder and CEO of Untaboo. "Many patients do not see it as a health concern at all. They begin to believe that an important part of their identity, their relationship or their life has ended."

The call stayed with them, and it left behind a question they could not answer from the outside. If a condition like this could push a person that far, what kind of help was he actually walking into when he went looking for treatment?

There was only one way to find out. Over the following months, both founders travelled to sexual health clinics across the country and presented themselves as prospective patients. The first visit told them most of what they needed to know.

At one poorly maintained facility, a session billed as counselling ran for about forty minutes. There was no clinical history taken, no assessment, no diagnosis, and no evidence-based process that either of them could recognise. At the end of it, the founders say they were not asked for money. They were pressured into handing over nearly ₹30,000 before they were allowed to walk out.

"There was no structured assessment, no diagnosis, no treatment planning based on any accepted medical principle," recalls Dr. Vanshikha Arora, Founder and Chief Medical Officer of Untaboo. "Coming from a medical background, I could see exactly what was missing. What stayed with me longer was the other part: the fear and helplessness of sitting in that room. If that is what we felt, knowing what we knew, imagine what a real patient feels."

The pattern repeated itself from city to city. Consultations that lasted a few minutes and ended in instant diagnoses. Unlabelled medicines handed over as traditional remedies. Treatment sold in pre-decided packages instead of being recommended after an examination.

At a clinic in Ludhiana, Vanshdeep was offered three of them: "Normal," "Advanced" and "Honeymoon."

"The practitioner claimed the most expensive package would repeatedly produce erections and cure erectile dysfunction completely," Vanshdeep said. "Nobody asked a single question about the possible physical, psychological, lifestyle or relationship causes. The whole conversation was built to create fear first and sell a package second."

Diagnosis First, Multidimensional Care

By the end of that trail, the siblings had a clear picture of the industry. More usefully, they had a list of everything they did not want to build.

Untaboo, the digital sexual healthcare platform they launched for both men and women, is built on the inversion of what they saw. The founders call it a diagnosis-first, multidimensional care model, and it rests on two ideas.

Diagnosis first means treatment does not begin with a pre-decided medicine, supplement or package. Every care pathway begins with a structured clinical assessment aimed at understanding the most likely causes and contributing factors behind the patient's concern. The principle is not that medicine must wait for absolute diagnostic certainty; it is that treatment should follow clinical assessment rather than precede it.

Multidimensional care means care is not limited to controlling the symptom a patient presents with. It looks beyond the symptom to identify and address the different factors that may be contributing to it -- whether physiological, psychological, lifestyle-related, medication-related, relationship-based, or a combination of several factors. The objective is therefore not only to help improve what the patient is experiencing, but also to work on the underlying and contributing causes wherever they can be identified.

"Sexual-health concerns rarely have a single universal cause," explains Dr. Vanshikha. "A patient may need medical treatment, lifestyle changes, psychological support, relationship counselling, diagnostic tests, or some combination of all of it. Giving the same medicine or the same package to everyone is not healthcare. It is retail."

What "Real Doctors. Real Care. Real Results." Actually Means

The platform's guiding line is short enough to fit on a hoarding. The founders are specific about what each part of it commits them to.

Real Doctors. Every consultation is with a qualified Registered Medical Practitioner or an appropriately qualified clinical psychologist. Not a salesperson, not an unverified practitioner, not a chatbot.

Real Care. Patients are recommended what the assessment says they need, not what they walked in asking for, and not what carries the highest margin. Where a case needs psychological support rather than medication, that is what is prescribed.

Real Results. Treatment is built around realistic expectations rather than exaggerated guarantees. Patients are told what the care plan is intended to address, what progress may reasonably look like and when it should be reviewed. Structured follow-ups allow the clinical team to assess response and modify the plan where necessary -- rather than promising a permanent cure in a fixed number of days.

In practice, a care pathway on Untaboo can include private telemedicine consultations, a personalised treatment plan, clinically appropriate medicines and supportive supplements where indicated, lifestyle and diagnostic support, counselling from qualified clinical psychologists, and structured follow-ups to track progress. Deliveries are made discreetly through authorised partners.

The founders are positioning this squarely against the product-first approach that has come to dominate India's sexual wellness market, where a single tablet, supplement or performance product is sold as the answer regardless of what is causing the problem.

The Part That Begins After the Consultation Ends

A model like this only holds if the patient is still being looked after once the video call is over. That, the founders argue, is where technology earns its place, and where most of the industry currently loses interest.

"Technology should not create distance between a doctor and a patient. It should reduce it," Vanshdeep said. "If someone is undergoing treatment with us, they should never feel that they were left on their own the moment the consultation ended."

Untaboo has therefore been built around the idea that telemedicine should offer continuity of care rather than simply replace the clinic room with a video call. Its technology infrastructure and AI features are designed to help patients remain connected with their care journey after the first consultation -- through structured follow-ups, accessible treatment information, progress tracking, reminders and easier communication with the care team.

For the founders, this is particularly important in sexual healthcare, where improvement may not always follow a straight line. A medicine may need adjustment, psychological factors may become clearer with time, investigations may reveal an underlying condition, or a patient may simply need continued support before progress becomes visible. The goal is for the care system to remain present through that process rather than disappearing after the first appointment.

The Waiting Rooms Were Full of Men

There was one more thing the founders noticed on the undercover trail, and it was hard to miss. Almost every clinic they walked into treated sexual health as a men's subject. The signage, the packages, the vocabulary and the waiting rooms were all built for one half of the population.

Untaboo has been designed from day one as a platform for both men and women, treating concerns such as low desire, difficulty with arousal and pain during sex with the same clinical seriousness as anything else.

"Sexual health has been treated like a male-performance category for far too long," Dr. Vanshikha said. "A woman living with pain, loss of desire or difficulty with intimacy deserves the same attention and the same access to professional care as anyone else. We want Untaboo to make that conversation ordinary."

Back to the Phone Call

The evening that started all of this was about one man experiencing an extraordinary level of distress around a sexual-health concern. A year on, the siblings say that call is still the standard they hold the platform to.

"Like many startups, we could also chase valuations," Dr. Vanshikha said. "But our first priority is to add value in the life of every person who approaches us for help."

About Untaboo

Untaboo is a Chandigarh-headquartered digital sexual healthcare platform founded by Vanshdeep Arora and Dr. Vanshikha Arora. Built on a diagnosis-first, multidimensional care model, the platform connects patients with qualified doctors and clinical psychologists for private telemedicine consultations, personalised treatment planning, diagnostics and structured follow-up care, for both men and women. Untaboo currently supports concerns including erectile difficulties, premature or delayed ejaculation, low sexual desire, pain during sex, orgasmic difficulties, and sexual-health concerns associated with hormonal and life-stage changes, including menopause.

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