This article has been contributed by Mr. Sanil Basutkar, Co-Founder, Healthysure.
The insurance sector, a vital part of our global economy, is on the cusp of a monumental transformation. This disruption is primarily driven by the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) and the increasing abundance of data. These technological advancements pave the way for insurers to enhance their offerings, streamline operations, and deliver exceptional customer service.
AI’s transformative potential is particularly striking in the health insurance industry. Harnessing the power of AI to analyze vast amounts of data allows insurers to gain a comprehensive understanding of their customers’ risks and needs. This deep insight fuels the development of more personalized, affordable health insurance plans.
For instance, AI facilitates accurate predictions about the likelihood of a customer developing chronic conditions like diabetes or heart disease. This predictive capability can then enable insurers to offer preventive care services or adjust insurance premiums to reflect the customer’s individual risk profile.
The financial implications of AI adoption are staggering. The global AI in the insurance market is projected to skyrocket from $2.7 billion in 2021 to an impressive $45.7 billion by 2031.
AI’s Role in Fraud Prevention and Claims Processing
AI can also play a critical role in identifying customers prone to fraudulent activities. By analyzing data from diverse sources like claim histories and social media, AI can identify suspicious patterns, thus mitigating potential fraud and shielding insurers from financial losses.
Several insurance companies have already embraced AI to combat fraud. Take the case of Lemonade, a startup using AI to automate the claims process and customize insurance policies. By leveraging AI, Lemonade has achieved a remarkable 30% reduction in fraud.
Another key application of AI in insurance lies in automating claims processing. AI’s ability to process claims swiftly and accurately liberates human employees to tackle more complex tasks, resulting in faster customer service and cost reductions. Startup Hippo is a prime example, using AI to process claims in minutes, thereby slashing processing times by an impressive 90%.
Enhancing Customer Service With AI
Beyond these applications, AI can dramatically improve insurers’ customer service. AI-powered chatbots can offer round-the-clock support, promptly resolving issues and answering customer queries. This use of AI can significantly boost customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Pioneering Applications of AI in Insurance
Several pioneering applications of AI in the insurance sector are reshaping the industry landscape:
Usage-Based Insurance (UBI): UBI leverages AI to monitor and analyze a customer’s driving habits, impacting their insurance premiums. This data-driven approach can result in lower premiums for safe drivers and higher premiums for risky ones.
Telematics: AI-powered telematics monitors a customer’s vehicle to assess their driving habits and accident risks, enabling insurers to offer premium discounts.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA): RPA employs AI to automate repetitive tasks like claims processing and underwriting policies, freeing human resources for more complex tasks and reducing costs.
Machine Learning: Machine learning utilizes AI to analyze data, identifying patterns and trends that help insurers make informed decisions. For instance, it can be used to identify customers likely to cancel their policies and target them with retention offers.
Natural Language Processing (NLP): NLP uses AI to interpret human language, enhancing customer service by allowing insurers to better understand customer queries and deliver personalized responses.
These examples represent just a fraction of AI’s current applications in the insurance sector. As AI continues to evolve, we can anticipate even more innovations.
The Impact of AI on the Insurance Industry
The influence of AI on the insurance industry is already palpable. In recent years, we’ve seen a surge of startups, like Lemonade, utilizing AI to disrupt traditional industry models. These companies automate the claims process and deliver personalized insurance policies, signaling a significant shift in how the industry operates.
Even established insurance companies are beginning to embrace AI. Progressive, for instance, is deploying AI to create new products and services, such as usage-based insurance.
The influence of AI on the insurance industry will undoubtedly amplify in the coming years. As AI technology continues to mature, it will catalyze even more innovation in the industry. The benefits will be manifold, from operational efficiency and effectiveness to enhanced customer-centricity in product and service offerings.
Conclusion: A Bright Future for Insurance
The future of the insurance industry is undoubtedly bright. AI technology is poised to fundamentally transform the sector, making it more efficient, effective, and customer-centric. As we look to the future, the continued evolution of AI promises to drive unprecedented innovation in the insurance industry.
With these changes on the horizon, insurance companies, whether startups or established, must proactively embrace AI and data analysis. Doing so will not only ensure their competitiveness but also enhance their ability to deliver superior, personalized service to their customers, marking a new era in the insurance industry.
StartupTalky presents Recap’22. This is a series of interviews in which we conduct in-depth discussions with founders & industry leaders to understand their growth in 2022 and their predictions for the future.
Corporate healthcare programs for organizations and their workforce are critical aspects of employee benefits and overall workplace wellness. These are designed to provide employees with access to health services and benefits that can help improve their physical, mental, and financial well-being. Having a corporate Healthcare program can lead to increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and health care costs.
The growth of insurance and healthcare for organizations and their workforce has been driven by a number of factors. One major factor has been the increasing cost of healthcare, which has led many employers to provide more comprehensive insurance coverage to their employees as a way to manage these costs.
According to a report by the International Labour Organization (ILO), around 60-70% of the formal sector workers in India have access to health insurance through their employers. This includes both public and private sector companies. The percentage is even higher in larger companies, as they tend to have more resources to offer benefits such as health insurance. Additionally, the Indian government is also promoting the health insurance for employees through various policies and regulations.
However, the market still faces challenges, such as a lack of awareness about health insurance, a lack of trust in insurance companies, and a lack of a robust network of healthcare providers.
For this Interview, we invited Anuj Parekh and Sanil Basutkar Co-founder, HealthySure and we talked about the growth, challenges, insights, and future opportunities in the Corporate Health Insurance industry.
StartupTalky: Anuj, What does Healthysure do?
Healthysure is a group benefits insurtech. We offer 360-degree insurance and healthcare for organizations and their workforce. Our ultimate vision is to enable affordable and accessible healthcare to the Indian population, and we see the organization-sponsored health programs go a long way to achieving that.
We genuinely believe that a lot can be done to improve healthcare in the country, and we hope to play a big part in the coming years to help achieve that.
StartupTalky: What is/are the USP/s of Healthysure over other platforms?
We have created a first-of-its-kind platform in India that offers full-stack infrastructure as a service for group benefits to intermediaries. What this means is that we provide end-to-end support for our partners to sell group insurance and healthcare, right from pricing to operations to claim settlement. We aim to be the turtemint of group insurance.
StartupTalky: How has the healthcare industry changed in recent years (2022) and how has your company adapted to these changes?
The insurance industry regulator IRDAI has been swift in enacting reforms after the appointment of its new chairman. These reforms range from lowering the investment thresholds and liberalizing licensing for new insurance companies, opening insurance distribution avenues, developing a new insurance exchange platform and many more. The insurance industry too overall has been growing steadily. Healthysure is benefitting from this growth and as the industry matures, we will be one of the major contributors in the industry.
StartupTalky: How do you stay up to date on the latest trends and developments in your industry?
Insurance is a very active industry with respect to community engagements. We generally have plenty of opportunities to interact with stakeholders within the community through live events, networking meets, and webinars. In today’s world of WhatsApp and LinkedIn, it’s not very difficult to be in touch with your peers and stay updated on the newest trends.
StartupTalky: What key metrics do you track to check the company’s growth and performance?
We track metrics such as the number of lives covered, the number of clients, gross written premiums, and total turnover.
StartupTalky: What were your company’s most significant challenges in the past year and how did you overcome them for 2023?
Our number one challenge is convincing first-time buyers of group health insurance to adopt sponsoring health insurance for their employees. The amount of premium is generally only a small fraction compared to an employee’s annual salary. The benefits that the organization gets are generally much larger than the outlay. Over 2/3rd clients are still first-time adopters, and we feel employers not having group insurance just lack a general awareness. We hope to address this in 2023 and make it easier for organizations to secure their employees’ health with our products, marketing, and technology.
StartupTalky: What are the different strategies you use for marketing? Tell us about any growth hack which you pulled off. (Some of the key things you adopted as a strategy in 2022)
We use the normal set of marketing strategies that revolve around content, SEO, SEM and outbound activities. What really sets our marketing apart is our channel of partners that help us source and secure deals. We are transitioning to a partner focused model. In a B2B business, this is generally a great way to scale.
StartupTalky: What are the essential tools and software you use to run your business smoothly?
We use a combination of tools and software such as Apollo, Zoho, Cashfree, Microsoft, G-suite among others.
StartupTalky: What opportunities do you see for future growth in your industry in India and the world?
The Indian insurance industry is poised for hyper-growth in the coming years. There is a lot of untapped potential in the Indian market. Despite being the 5th largest economy, India is only the 10th largest insurance market (2021) with premiums of around US$ 125 Bn. For context, the US leads the globe with US 2,700 Bn and China comes in 2nd with US$ 700 Bn. The Indian insurance story alone is a very large one. But we also believe our technology and products could have global use cases.
StartupTalky: What lessons did your team learn in the past year and how will these inform your future plans and strategies?
As any startup grows, they become mature in understanding its industry. They realize there are certain problems that they can solve and are certain that they can’t. The hypothesis is that these startups have initially are invalidated and they are replaced by something new. We have a similar story, and through our experience in this industry, we are now working to add more value to this industry. We will continue to have the philosophy of build-learn-iterate and that can help us create something truly valuable to the ecosystem that in turn helps fulfill our vision.
StartupTalky: How do you plan to expand the Customers, product, and team base in the future?
We have invested heavily over the last year in our team, technology, and product. These investments will help us gain new customers faster in the coming year. We again have had the opportunity to create a scalable technology that will support multiple product use cases in the future. We continuously reach out to people that show interest in working with us, we have laid the groundwork to scale our team when we pursue aggressive growth.
StartupTalky: One tip that you would like to share with people reading this article who want to get into entrepreneurship.
A lot of people have ideas for starting up. What makes entrepreneurs different is the intent and ability to execute these ideas.
We thank Anuj Parekh and Sanil Basutkarfor spending their valuable time and sharing their learnings with all of us.
Happy New Year to all the StartupTalky readers! Here’s to a year of hard work, innovation, growth, profit, and Impact!🚀
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by HealthySure.
Awareness towards health has increased after the Covid-19 pandemic. People have seen a medical crisis during pandemics which has made them more concerned about health insurance. The increase in awareness and demand for health insurance has confirmed that consumers want better health insurance for themselves and their families. Even after opting for good coverage, when in need, claiming health insurance becomes a pain point for consumers.
HealthySure has brought a solution through its affordable and accessible healthcare insurance system. It enables Indian citizenship to get a healthy society through insurance along with healthcare services. Read to know more about HealthySure, its founders, business model, its services, and the startup story.
Anuj Parekh, co-founder of HealthySure sharing story of starting HealthySure
HealthySure – About
HealthySure is an employee welfare insurtech. They offer 360-degree insurance and healthcare for organizations and their workforce. Their ultimate vision is to enable affordable and accessible healthcare to the Indian population, and they see organization sponsored health programs going a long way to achieve that.
Even if an organization is spending a small amount to get insurance cover for their workforce, they plan to leverage that spend and let employees take advantage bring down the cost of comprehensive voluntary health insurance.
They genuinely believe that a lot can be done to improve healthcare in the country and they hope to play a big part in the coming years to help achieve that.
HealthySure – Industry
The Group Health Insurance Market is projected to grow to $11Bn (Rs 80,000 Crore) by 2025 and is almost 1.5x the size of the retail health market. (IRDA Industry Statistics and IBEF and Mordor Intelligence reports). These numbers were projected pre-pandemic. They have clearly seen that this number will be way higher due to the increasing awareness and necessity of health insurance post-covid.
There are more than 100 million private organizations in India. As India’s penetration of insurance and health cover is very low, there is a huge scope for social security to be provided through organizations as is the case with some of the developed countries. HealthySure is focusing on SMEs and corporates in India with 1 Million such businesses, employing 36 million people.
Anuj is the Co-founder and CEO. He is a chartered accountant and a national rank holder, and has graduated from IIM Bangalore. He has over 7+ years of experience in management consulting, investment banking and corporate finance. Anuj was the key project consultant at Virgin Hyperloop, driving commercialization of world’s first hyperloop corridor in India before taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.
Sanil is the Co-founder and Product Head. He is a chartered accountant and has graduated from Indian School of Business. He has 7+ years of experience in product management, financial services and management consulting. He is also a founder of Saransh app, a news-in-short equivalent for the vernacular masses. Sanil was the lead product manager at Torre Capital, a fintech investments platform before co-founding HealthySure.
They are very good friends from their undergrad days when they studied at N.M. College. They always wanted to solve problems, create an impact and had an entrepreneurial mindset. The problem that they are solving, they could personally relate to which just gave them the push to launch HealthySure.
They bring in complimenting set of skills – while Anuj handles sales, business development and operations, Sanil is involved in product, technology and marketing. Rest of the functions are pretty much divided between the rest of us. Their experience working with startups has really helped us manage multiple things within the company.
They are currently a team of 25+. They have set up a culture that promotes ownership and responsibility. They encourage team to be not afraid to make mistakes and solve problems on their own. They like to offer a helping hand to them wherever needed. While they promote their openings across, they generally speak to people who directly approach them and also heavily promote referrals within their team and network.
HealthySure – The Idea and Startup Story
It was during, the pandemic that they observed a big problem faced by people even with a health insurance cover. For some of their close friends, COVID hospitalization costs for family members were going through the roof. Despite having organization-sponsored health insurance, they were struggling to pay off bills as their cover was inadequate or had certain restrictions such as a room or disease capping leading to short claim settlements.
As they dug deeper into this problem, this pattern of inadequate health cover was clearly visible across the board.
Organizations, in most cases, are restricted by budget constraints and as a result opt for a cover that may not be comprehensive. For instance, a corporate health cover of 3 lacs may not be enough to cover healthcare needs of an employee’s family and this does not inspire confidence. This results in either the employee opting for a separate personal cover and in essence paying double the premium or as in most cases, the employee is unable to afford a comprehensive cover, thereby leaving him with the potential for crippling debt at the time of critical emergencies – as was the case observed during COVID. It’s not that people don’t want to have a comprehensive cover, health insurance is also becoming an expensive proposition for many.
They have innovated a first-in-industry product that helps employees upgrade their corporate health cover for a nominal amount. In the process, the employees enjoy saving as high as 90% over an independent policy. The employees get an added advantage of continuing such covers in personal capacity post-employment with HealthySure. HealthySure is thus making it very affordable to have a comprehensive lifelong insurance cover for any employee.
HealthySure – Name, Tagline, and Logo
HealthySure Logo
HealthySure is a unique combination of belief in enabling a healthy society and primarily enabling it through insurance along with healthcare services. So, it’s basically a blend of Health + Insure. Their close friends pitched in with the suggestion while they were brainstorming on what to call ourselves. They immediately identified with it. Their logo is just an extension of their name and identity.
HealthySure – Products and Services
HealthySure provides group health insurance to companies. They have innovated a first-in-industry product that helps employees upgrade their corporate health cover for a nominal amount. In the process, the employees enjoy saving as high as 90% over an independent policy. The employees get an added advantage of continuing such covers in personal capacity post-employment with HealthySure. They are thus making it very affordable to have a comprehensive lifelong insurance cover for any employee.
HealthySure offers employees to take a cover of as high as Rs. 1 crore and all this, while saving significant costs since a sizable portion is subsidized by the organizations themselves. All this is managed through a seamless tech experience for the organization and as well as their workforce.
The platform also offers a 360 degree healthcare services for their clients including doctor consultations, health checkups, mental wellness, fitness memberships, discounted pharmacy purchases and lab tests among a few.
They operate in the B2B space and are also able to target employees and have a B2B2C segment. Insurance plans may cost as little as Rs 50 per employee per month for basic covers and can go as high as Rs 3,000 per employee per month for a comprehensive coverage. Compared to retail covers in the market, this still comes at a very low cost.
HealthySure – Business Model and Revenue Model
HealthySure monetizes through insurance commissions and selling healthcare services to organizations. Due to their unique offering of Unified Health Insurance, they also see good demand from employees subscribing to additional voluntary insurance coverage.
HealthySure – Customer Acquisition
Getting the first set of customers is always a challenge for any business, specially if you are a B2B business. What worked in their favor was their narrative of ensuring the best possible service and addressing the pain points of their customers.
As the market grew, they started automating their processes and thus letting them gradually build scale. To give an example, they carefully studied the health insurance claims journey of an employee. In a few months, they automated the entire backend process for their customers. They were careful not to bring in the usual solutions of chatbots and telecallers as they understand that human element is always critical in a stressful time like hospitalization. Their clients therefore always have a person to talk to which gives them comfort. As a result, they have settled more than 100+ claims and have received 5 star ratings from their customers on the service.
HealthySure – Challenges Faced
For any startup, building a team and fostering a great culture is the biggest challenge, even more than raising capital. They have been lucky to have had great people in the founding team, who have believed in their vision and continue to deliver exceptionally.
Building their team required great efforts. While it is important to build a team as soon as possible, they would generally take time. They spoke to people who approached them directly or through their networks and build a connect with them. So even if their team building took time, they had the best of people join them who believed in them and their vision. They have managed to keep their attrition really low which has given them a good stability to build the company.
Their culture of emphasizing learning, ownership, and responsibility ensures that they are building leaders within the company. This is something that will be their competitive advantage for years to come.
HealthySure – Growth
HealthySure started operations 9 months ago and currently doing an Annualized Gross premium of around 15 Crores. This is additionally supplemented by revenue from healthcare-related services. They expect this to grow significantly. They are scaling up their team, technology and operations. While they are yet to achieve profitability, they are confident it may come within the next 2-3 years. They have been very efficient in capital deployment and will focus on growth as well as profitability.
HealthySure – Funding
Date
Stage
Amount
Investors
Feb 2022
Pre-series A
INR 9 Crores
They have raised a pre-series A round funding of Rs. 9 crores in Feb-22 with a clutch of institutions participating. The funds are currently being deployed to scale up their tech, operations and to create an amazing brand HealthySure.
HealthySure – Competitors
Some top competitors of HealthySure are:
Pazcare
Nova Benefits
Plum
HealthySure – Tools Used in the Company
Some of the tools that HealthySure uses to run the startups are:
They hope to serve around 1,50,000 lives within the next 12 months and over a million over the next 2 to 3 years. They have aggressive plans to build a brand that the entire B2B ecosystem has trust and confidence with. Their target groups are SMEs in India, who are predominantly looking to buy employee benefits for the first time. They see a lot of growth in this sector as organizations realize the importance of health covers post the pandemic. There are also some indications of government mandating employee health covers as social security for organizations like certain developed countries. If this happens, it will give rise to exponential demand.
FAQs
When was HealthySure founded?
HealthySure was founded in 2021.
Who is the founder of HealthySure?
Sanil Basutkar & Anuj Parekh are the founders of HealthySure.
Is HealthySure funded?
Yes, HealthySure received a funding of INR 9 Crores in Feb 2022.
Preeti Karna
