While other meditation apps need you to find ten or twenty minutes of quiet time per day, we know that even that can be a struggle to fit into an already busy day. That is why buddhify focusses on mobile or on-the-go meditation, which you can do wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. We do still have more traditional formal meditations, but they are there for when you have time.
We believe that the purpose of a good meditation app is to help you get to the point where you don’t need a meditation app. That goal of helping you become a creative, independent meditator is why buddhify has an upfront cost rather than the more common monthly subscription model. Subscriptions are great for investors, but not always for users who don’t want to feel dependent or trapped. We also prefer a low one-off fee since we believe that a good mindfulness and meditation app shouldn’t be something that only rich people can afford. We do have our Membership offer which does cost an additional annual fee, but it is entirely optional.
Buddhify started when creator Rohan Gunatillake decided to combine his deep experience in mindfulness meditation with years working in technology and innovation. And thanks to the success of the app, led mainly by word-of-mouth, Rohan stopped doing his previous consultancy work and now, together with his wife Lucy (who is the lead female voice on buddhify), works on buddhify and related products full-time through their company called Mindfulness Everywhere. This does make us an outlier given that our main ‘competitors’ are all conventional US-based investor-backed startups.
Because the company is entirely self-funded, it means we can focus on the people that use our app rather than serving the needs of investors. Our values are important to us and staying independent means that our work can be the expression of values such as generosity, respect for the user, creativity, and authenticity. We think it’s these values that make buddhify feel as special as it does.
Diversity is something that is very important to us. Not only does having a diverse team make a better product, it also means that people who use our app will have a better chance of seeing themselves represented. That really matters. Perhaps today more than ever. That is why our core team is gender balanced and perhaps most importantly our roster of 14 teachers/voices is 60% female and 35% people of colour. We still have blindspots of course, but as we grow we hope to continue to do so in such a way that the diversity of our people match the diversity of our community. Because ultimately they are the same thing. So do tell us how we can do better.
In a context like mindfulness where all ‘experts’ tend to say the same often bland things, buddhify creator Rohan Gunatillake is different. Having gained his initial reputation for his emphasis on mindfulness on-the-go, he is now increasingly known as a progressive yet authentic voice on all things meditation from its relationship to technology all the way to how mindfulness apps and the wider meditation industry could and should do better.
