The Story Behind Guidance Lab

Two people. One shared belief: that every family deserves access to thoughtful, trustworthy mental health support — in their language, in their context, at the right time.

Where It Begins

Guidance Lab was built on something that had already been quietly working for years — a counselor’s consistent, unhurried presence in the lives of students and families who needed it.

Shaveta Sharma had spent years working directly with students, parents, and educational institutions. Not in a clinic removed from everyday life, but in schools and university settings, in the same spaces where young people were figuring out who they were and what they were carrying. Families came to trust her — not because of a promise made, but because of a practice shown.

Puneet Sharma watched that work closely. As someone who had spent his career building technology platforms in health and operations, he saw both the depth of the need and an honest gap: the people who most needed support often couldn’t reach it. Distance, stigma, scheduling, cost — access was the problem. The counseling itself was already good. It just needed to travel further.

Guidance Lab is their answer to that problem.

Meet the Founders

Shaveta Sharma

Co-Founder · Practicing CounselorShaveta has spent her career in the places where young people and families need support the most — schools, universities, and the quieter, harder conversations that happen when life gets complicated.

Her work with students, parents, and educational institutions has shaped everything about how Guidance Lab approaches care: grounded, non-judgmental, and built around the realities of Indian families navigating change.

She is the clinical heart of Guidance Lab — and its most important quality gate. No content, no session format, no resource goes out without her.

Puneet Sharma

Co-Founder · Technology & Operations

Puneet comes from a background in building digital health platforms — systems designed to make good care more reachable, more organised, and more consistent. His focus has always been on the infrastructure side of access: who isn’t being reached, and what does it take to change that.

At Guidance Lab, he builds and manages the platform that lets Shaveta’s counseling work scale thoughtfully — enabling counselor collaboration, expanding reach across the region, and ensuring that the experience of seeking support is as smooth and private as it should be.

He believes the best health technology is the kind you don’t notice — it just gets out of the way and lets the real work happen.

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What We’re Here to Do

Mental health support in India has a reach problem. Too many students sit with anxiety they can’t name. Too many parents carry worry they don’t know how to voice. Too many families believe that asking for help is a sign of failure — when it is, in fact, one of the most practical things a person can do.

Guidance Lab exists to make it easier to ask. Through counseling, workshops, and education resources built for Indian families, we want help-seeking to feel as normal as any other step a family takes to look after itself.

We are not a crisis service. We are a place to think, talk, and understand — for students managing pressure, for parents trying to stay connected, for schools and institutions that want to support the people in their care.

“Mental health is not a private burden to manage in silence. It is something families can learn about, talk about, and navigate together.”

— Shaveta Sharma

We’d Love to Connect

Whether you’re a parent exploring support for your family, a student looking for a space to make sense of things, a school or institution interested in our workshops, or a counselor interested in collaboration — we’re glad you’re here.

Guidance Lab is growing steadily, shaped by the real conversations we have with students, parents, and educators every week.

If anything on this page resonates, reach out. There’s no script, no sales process. Just a conversation.