Ghazanfar
Idrees

Co-Founder & COO, Shifa Therapy + CounselClinic.
Building mental health infrastructure for the Muslim world.

🌐

20+

Countries

🤝

165+

Therapists

📈

1,213%

Organic Growth

1.8 billion Muslims globally have never had a scaled, culturally safe mental health platform. I co-founded two to fix that.

What I'm building → Let's talk

About

I didn't start with a thesis about Muslim mental health. I started with watching people I grew up with avoid therapy — not because they didn't need it, but because nothing felt safe, culturally understood, or affordable.

That observation became a question. The question became research. And the research showed a market: 1.8 billion Muslims globally, chronically underserved, with a trust gap no generic platform has closed.

So I stopped being an employee. I co-founded Shifa Therapy and CounselClinic — two online therapy platforms built from zero in 18 months. 165+ verified therapists. Clients across 20+ countries. Organic traffic up 1,213% without a paid acquisition budget.

I run everything — product, technology, sales, therapist operations, marketing, pricing, fundraising. Not because I have to. Because I believe the operator who understands every layer of the machine builds the most durable company.

Career Arc

2024 – Present

Co-Founder & COO

Shifa Therapy + CounselClinic

165+ therapists · 20+ countries · Seed round open

2024 – 2025

Director of Product Studio

Devsinc

Led product studio for growth-oriented products

2023 – 2024

Head of Product

PakWheels.com

Led PMs, designers, and SEO experts

2022 – 2023

Head of Product

Fitcy Health

20% engagement increase · 15% conversion boost

2019 – 2022

PM → Head of Product

oladoc.com — Pakistan's largest healthcare platform

10X organic growth · 50% conversion · 30% retention

2013 – 2019

Technical Product Manager

CareMed Specialty Pharmacy

SaaS healthcare products · 80% data entry reduction

2014 – 2015

Program Officer

Punjab IT Board

CPEC monitoring · Punjab Law Portal

2013 – 2014

R&D Fellow

LUMS — Technology for People Initiative

Crime mapping adopted by Punjab & Dubai Police

What I Believe

"Features don't fix retention."

"Emerging markets force you to build better."

"Trust is the product."

"The operator who understands every layer builds the most durable company."

Outside Work

Table tennis. Science and astronomy — genuinely curious about how things work at every scale. Currently building an educational iPad app for my son about space exploration. B.Eng Software Engineering, University of Bradford.

What I'm building

One infrastructure. Two markets. One unfair advantage.

Two platforms. Two markets. Shifa Therapy serves the global Muslim community. CounselClinic serves the broader MENA and international market. Both are online-only, built from zero in 18 months.

Shifa Therapy

The world's first scaled mental health platform for Muslims.

20+ Countries

165+ Therapists

1,213% Organic Growth

shifatherapy.com ↗

CounselClinic

Professional online therapy for MENA and beyond.

800% Growth

100% Online

counselclinic.com ↗

The Market

1.8 billion Muslims worldwide. Mental health remains deeply stigmatised across Muslim-majority countries and diaspora communities. Gen Z therapy adoption is accelerating. At just 1% penetration, the addressable market exceeds $9 billion. No one has built the scaled, trust-first platform this population needs. That's what we're doing.

Speaking

How to Grow a Product?

Out of Sync Podcast

Deep dive on product growth strategy, retention architecture, and what it takes to build scalable products in emerging markets.

Speaker Bio

Ghazanfar Idrees is Co-Founder & COO of Shifa Therapy and CounselClinic — two online therapy platforms serving Muslims and the broader MENA market with verified therapists across 20+ countries. He has spent over a decade scaling digital products across HealthTech, SaaS, FinTech, and AI.

Topics I Speak About

Building for the world's most underserved mental health market

1.8 billion Muslims, chronic stigma, and why the solution is a trust problem — not a technology problem.

Why the best HealthTech is being built outside Silicon Valley

Emerging markets force harder constraints, leaner teams, and more creative solutions. That's an advantage.

From operator to founder: the leap nobody prepares you for

What changes when you go from running someone else's machine to building your own — and what stays the same.

AI as a thinking partner, not a writing tool

How I use AI for sales analysis, competitive intelligence, and operational decisions — not email drafts.

Other Appearances

Thriving in the Age of AI — Namal University Alumni Talk Series
Seminar on embracing AI, navigating careers, and building in a rapidly evolving world.
GIS Crime Mapping Tool — Featured in Dawn and Express Tribune (LUMS / Punjab Police collaboration)

Invite me to speak →