Mumbai: A new app called ‘Rent A Boy|Friend’ (RABF), which claims to help people fighting depression, was launched here recently.
Kaushal Prakash, the app’s founder claims that he had been a victim of depression and claims his app can help fight mental illness.
How It Works?
Kaushal says that his app helps connect women with ‘gentlemen’ who are all properly selected A-grade models and are groomed in etiquette, table manners, metered speaking, speech and body-language. He claims that they have done a thorough background check on the models or ‘boyfriends’.
The women can ‘rent’ them. Unlike dating apps, the whole process is platonic, claims Kaushal. The meetings are arranged in a public location and there are no private meetings. The men can give ‘emotional support’, said Kaushal in a report published in Yahoo News.
“We are not being hired to give a woman or man a romantic date. Our job is only to talk to the client, understand their problems and to steer them toward getting medical help or therapy if they so need,” said 2018 Rubaroo Mr India winner Suraj Dahiya in a report published on News18.
The women can hire men for Rs 300 per hour to Rs 3000 per hour for a ‘celebrity boyfriend’ like Dahiya.
The app also has a toll-free number for ‘psychiatric help’ which costs Rs 500 for 15-20 minutes.
According to the report in Yahoo News, a Mumbai-based psychiatrist was extremely sceptical of the idea and said, “It seems to me like RABF is trying to cover up a racket with a mental health service, which also means they are discounting the 16 years of training some of us mental health experts have to undertake.”
