Quick commerce, stress and the rise of India’s pain economy

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Initially, Navin Israni, 36, didn’t treat his back pain as much as he furnished around it. A back-support cushion for his work chair, then a medicine ball he tried sitting on and returned for being too large—both ordered online. The cushion on his sofa moved up to act as back support, then a sheet of plywood affixed to provide a firm seat.

At doctors’ clinics, he avoided soft couches in waiting rooms whenever he could. The content marketer first felt this sharp ache across his back in late September 2024. It quickly began to shape his days.

He works from home, but reached a point where he could no longer sit comfortably at his desk, walk along the inclined road outside his Pune residence or play tennis, a sport he had loved since childhood. Pain had affected every aspect of his life. “I hoped for a day free of pain,” he says.During this period, Israni’s close friend with a much worse back-and-neck condition underwent surgery.

Looking back, he suspects watching that friend’s recovery pushed him “to do something about my pain instead of living with it”. An MRI revealed loss of lumbar lordosis (the lower back’s natural inward curve), along with multiple low-grade disc damages. For the first four months, the medical system frustrated him further.

His first orthopaedic doctor was dismissive of his questions, his first physiotherapist handed him standard exercises that only made the pain worse, he says. A second physiotherapist, found via Google Reviews a year later, gave him more basic exercises he could graduate from slowly. Eventually, these exercises, along with supplements— zinc, calcium, vitamin D—started to reduce the flare-ups.Israni also came across videos by American physician Brad