WoW Woman in Health Tech - Manjul Rathee, co-founder and CEO at BFB Labs
Manjul Rathee is CEO and co-founder at BFB Labs: a social enterprise building digital therapeutics to tackle childhood anxiety. BFB Labs' "hero" service, Lumi Nova, has been accessed by more than 15k children to-date via the NHS, schools and local authorities.
Prior to founding BFB Labs, Manjul launched the UK's first child-led campaign to tackle avoidable blindness. Manjul has presented at a number of high profile conferences, including NHS Confederation Expo, Public Health England Annual Conference and eMen. She's been awarded the Prime Minister's Point of Light Commendation, and was recognised as one of the Best Providers of Mental Health Services by the HSJ in 2025.
BFB Labs is reimagining mental healthcare for a new generation to make support personalised, fun, and available on children and young people’s terms. The team’s award-winning interventions help young minds to overcome challenges and build lifelong learning skills.
Tell us a bit about your background and your projects so far
I’m the CEO and co-founder of BFB Labs, a mission-driven social enterprise building digital therapeutics to tackle childhood anxiety. We combine clinical excellence with immersive, ethical gaming to create accessible early interventions, working closely with NHS Trusts, Integrated Care Boards, schools, academic institutions and local authorities to widen access to support.
Our core service, Lumi Nova, is a NICE-recommended digital therapeutic that has supported more than 15,000 children to help with difficulties around fears, worries and anxiety and building skills to self-manage mental health via the NHS, schools and local authorities. We’ll be launching a brand new service for 13-25 year olds facing difficulties with low mood and reduced motivation later this year.
Before founding BFB Labs, I launched Eye Heroes, the UK’s first child-led campaign to tackle avoidable blindness. Throughout my career, I’ve been driven by one question: how can we use innovation to solve urgent, systemic problems affecting vulnerable communities?
How did you get into this industry? Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
I didn’t follow a traditional path into healthtech. I was working on social impact initiatives when I was offered the opportunity to lead a project at what was then a two-person organisation. In its second year, the company was struggling. We could easily have closed it down - but we didn’t. We built it up from there, and that journey became BFB Labs.
It hasn’t been easy. As a migrant woman of colour, I’ve experienced structural barriers. I’ve been in roles where I was overworked, underpaid and underappreciated. That experience was frustrating, but it also pushed me to build something on my own terms and to refuse to compromise on my values.
Healthtech itself is a challenging space. You have to navigate strict regulation and work within large and often complex public systems while delivering the product promise to end users. But if your mission is strong enough, you can find ways to cut through.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle? What are the challenges of being in the industry you are in?
BFB Labs launched in 2015, so getting to where we are now has involved more than a decade of hard, focused work. There’s no such thing as an overnight success in digital health, especially when you’re building evidence-based, regulated technology.
Our biggest obstacle has been balancing the scale of our mission with the commercial reality. We’re trying to address a global mental health crisis in children and young people, while operating within large healthcare systems that move carefully and slowly. You need clinical validation, regulatory approval, procurement alignment and sustainable revenue models to come together all at once.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
There are a few milestones I’m particularly proud of:
Lumi Nova becoming recommended by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as a first-line treatment option for children with anxiety
Achieving MHRA registration as a Software as a Medical Device and DTAC approval by NHS England
Supporting over 15,000 children, many of whom would otherwise have been on long waiting lists for support
Seeing Lumi Nova drive incredible outcomes for ethnic minority children and children with SEND - which speaks to our commitment to widening access and improving equity
Being awarded the Prime Minister’s Point of Light Commendation and being recognised as one of the Best Providers of Mental Health Services by the HSJ in 2025
The most meaningful achievement is knowing that many of the children who use our intervention don’t require follow-up care. That’s early intervention in action.
What are the projects you are currently working on?
We’re expanding our digital therapeutic portfolio to benefit young people in a much wider age range. Supporting under 12s helped us springboard into the mental health landscape - we also want to support children and young people as they grow up, find their way in the world and encounter different challenges.
We’re also focused on geographic expansion and continuing to strengthen our research base.
Is the #WomenInTech movement important to you and if yes, why?
Yes, very much so. Representation matters because diversity attracts diversity. If leadership teams are diverse, you’re more likely to build inclusive products and attract talent from a broader range of backgrounds.
I’m proud that BFB Labs is female and ethnic minority-led. We’ve built a culture where different perspectives are valued because better health solutions require diverse thinking.
What will be the key trends in your industry in the next five years and where do you see them heading?
I hope we’ll see digital health solutions shift from being seen as “add-ons” to being recognised as standalone, scalable interventions within healthcare systems.
I also hope we’ll see greater emphasis on prevention and early intervention - particularly in children’s mental health. The data is clear: half of all mental health disorders start before 14. If we intervene early, we reduce long-term burden significantly.
Finally, I expect stronger conversations around equity. Technology has the potential to close health disparities by increasing access. The companies that succeed in doing so will be those that design inclusively from day one.
What is the most important piece of advice you could give to anyone who wants to start a career in this industry?
Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses is often taken for granted, yet it’s frequently overlooked. Getting a handle on them allows you to fill the gaps by recruiting the right team - and having the right people around you is essential for success.
It ensures you’ve got all bases covered, helping you crack on and persevere through the often sluggish process of achieving sustainability within the healthcare sector.
Who are three inspirational women in your respective industry you admire?
I’m inspired by Prof. Kathryn M. Abel: Professor of Psychological Medicine and Director of the Centre for Women’s Mental Health at the University of Manchester. She is an Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist for Greater Manchester Mental Health NHS Trust where she is also Director of the GM Digital Research Unit. . She co-authored a recent study we published in JMIR which proved how Lumi Nova can support children facing difficulties with fears, worries or anxiety living in economically disadvantaged areas.
I am also inspired by my two senior leadership colleagues at BFB Labs: Kelly Tham (Service Growth) and Nabeena Mali (Product), who work tirelessly everyday to build and scale our technology so that we can support as many children as we possibly can.
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