About Kikstart Rehabilitation and Our Founder, Saima Wasti

When something in your child's day, or in your own, keeps getting harder, the heaviest part is rarely the difficulty itself. It's the quiet sense that you're carrying it alone. I built Kikstart so you wouldn't have to.

I've never believed therapy belongs only inside a clinic or a hospital. Over more than ten years I've worked on the ground in communities, slums, hospitals and different cities, with children, adolescents, adults, parents and caregivers, through every kind of need. In person and online, my work has always circled one question: how does this person actually function in their everyday life? Progress isn't really about reducing symptoms. It's about living, participating, and feeling capable inside the ordinary routines of a day. Therapy has to fit into real life, not sit apart from it.

The harder, less visible parts of everyday life are understood at the level of how they truly work: attention, memory, sensory processing, emotional regulation, learning, speech, and the small skills that add up to independence. And that holds for children, adolescents and adults alike.

Being both a therapist and a parent has taught me how overwhelming, emotional and uncertain this journey can feel from the inside. It's why I believe support has to be empathetic, culturally sensitive, and built on trust, never fear, never quick fixes. And it's why the people around you or your child matter as much to me as the child or the individual.

We are a coordinated team of occupational therapists, a speech therapist, a special educator and a psychologist, so different needs are worked on together rather than referred away for you to stitch together. Everything happens online, in several Indian languages, so support can meet you in the language you actually think and feel in.

My other side is happiest when deep in a book, out playing a sport, or in a long, unhurried conversation about the things that shape how we live: women's rights, justice, philosophy, the world and how we move through it. Mostly, though, I listen. I've learned the most from watching people: their cultures, their quiet strengths, the way they carry their days. It's the same thing I want for you here at Kikstart: to be seen clearly, met warmly, and helped in a way that fits the life you actually live.

Kikstart works with families across India and abroad, which means that wherever you are, we can begin.