How this Indian insurance startup aspires to reach masses with low-cost services

Ankit Agarwal, CEO, and co-founder of InsuranceDekho in an interview with Mint spoke about how insurance is reaching the masses amid the covid pandemic, the company’s fundraising plans, focus on tech-end products, future growth ambitions, and more.

Is insurance going to the masses, especially young individuals?

Yes, Insurance is going to the masses especially young individuals from tier 2 and beyond cities. Increasing accessibility to insurance solutions on digital platforms is democratizing insurance availability to younger people and people from across the country.

How has investing in the insurance space changed in the past 2 years amid the pandemic? 

In the last two years, the product mix has evolved in the insurance segment. The pandemic has increased awareness about health and life insurance and it is about to stay for long. Both the underlying markets are growing rapidly, and we are expecting that in the coming 3 to 4 years, health and life insurance will account for around 45 to 50% of our business. 

 What do you think is your USP in this segment?

There are around more than 400 insurance brokers in the country. But, we are one of the fastest-growing players in this segment and are a strong tech-focused player. Our aim is towards building distribution and ensuring a frictionless journey for both customers and partners and that makes us different in this segment. We provide cutting-edge technology solutions to ensure seamless distribution capabilities to our partners and competitive pricing and support to our direct customers in this segment.

Tell us about the demography of your subscribers. Which cities? What percentage? 

We are present across the country, with a stronghold on the northern and western ends of the country. And this region contributes around 55-60% of our book. We are focusing on building deeper market penetration in the Eastern and Southern parts of India, which currently accounts for around 45% of our overall business. However, we need to go deeper and at Insurance Dekho we aspire to have one InsuranceDekho advisor in every village of India, which is nearly 6 lakhs. 

Any capital, fundraising plans? How do you plan to use it? Also, any IPO plans? 

Yes, we are planning to raise external funding from the market, and Haitong Investment bank is our investment banker for this purpose. As we have built this business frugally with a unit economic-focused manner now, we are at the perfect stage to raise capital externally for the next phase of growth of the organization. 

We are currently aiming to increase our distribution channels, increase market penetration across the country and build world-class and tech-driven products with a wider variety. 

How are you planning to use tech, innovation to disrupt the industry and compete with your rivals, be it present or upcoming?

Tech-end products are at the centre of everything that we do at Insurance Dekho. We are planning to extensively invest in tech-end products and make sure that we are building a world-class product-first organization. Our focus is also towards upgrading our platform through the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) -powered technologies so as to ensure that the entire selling journey for the partners on the other side is intuitive. 

Are you planning to introduce any new products or foray into some other segments?

We are currently working with our insurance company partners to launch new products. We are focusing on bit-sized products which enable coverage of individuals at lower costs. Simultaneously we are also upgrading our platform so as to provide seamless buying and selling experiences for both insurance companies and agent partners.