Plum, a Bengaluru-based group health insurance startup that works with corporates, has raised Rs 7 crore in seed funding.
The round was led by Incubate Fund with participation from Gemba Capital and Tracxn Labs along with angel investors, including Abhijit Gupta and Ram Sahasranam of Praxify Health, Sudheendra Chilappagari of Belong.co, Nitin Jayakrishnan of Pando, and Alvin Tse of Xiaomi.
L-R: Saurabh Arora (CTO) and Abhishek Poddar (CEO)
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The company said it planned to use the funding to scale business and engineering teams so as to solve some of the toughest engineering challenges in insurtech and build innovative distribution channels.
Working with nine insurance companies, Plum claimed to have over 100 companies as customers within just four months of launch.
Abhishek Poddar, Co-founder and CEO, Plum, said,
“We want to be the de-facto platform for employee health insurance, initially in India, and later in other developing markets like Southeast Asia and Latam.”
The startup, through its online platform, is on a mission to enable employee health insurance for over 1.1 million companies in India by reinventing how health insurance works. It understands the needs of a corporate and guides them on setting up their group health insurance in less than 60 minutes.
Plum additionally helps employees with improved health benefits including doctor consultations, health check-ups, fitness and yoga, mental wellness, nutrition, and dental care. The platform, which has an insurance intermediary licence from IRDA, enables ease of experience for employees with guided claims support.
In the current situation, Plum also offers COVID-19 to its clients, including Twilio, Instawork, Posist, RevvSales, The Label Life, Growfit, StayAbode, Fampay, myHQ, and Jiny.
Plum was founded in late 2019 by Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora, who comes with experience in financial technologies and insurance distribution.
Saurabh Arora, Co-founder and CTO of Plum, said, “At Plum, we are imagining group health insurance products from the ground-up. We have built underwriting and fraud detection rails with insurance companies that never ever existed. This has enabled us to offer pricing that may be up to 80 percent cheaper than existing market pricing, to companies as small as seven employees. At Plum, we are building a truly online insurance platform that covers front end (distribution) and back end (pricing, carrier and compliances).”
According to the startup, the group health insurance market in India, which is almost 50 percent of the total health insurance market, is expected to grow to Rs 100,000 crore by 2025. It has seen an annual growth of about 25 percent in the last few years, and is doubling every three years.
Nao Murakami, Founder and General Partner at Incubate Fund India, said,
“Group health insurance is a very complicated product in nature and the entire customer process, from buying to claiming, is still very manual in India. So, there is a huge gap between insurance companies, employers, and employees. Plum is filling this gap by bringing transparency and efficiency through beautiful technology and product.”
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
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Original Source: yourstory.com
Home-grown healthcare venture capital fund HealthQuad on Monday said it had raised Rs 514 crore in an initial funding round for its second fund, aimed at supporting disruptive, technology-based and innovation driven businesses that transform healthcare in India.
The success of the fund at a time of overwhelming negative sentiment due to the COVID-19 pandemic indicates how investors are turning towards funds that support futuristic healthcare startups and organisations creating healthcare solutions for tomorrow, HealthQuad said. 
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The fund has been supported by some leading global investors, including Ackermans & van Haaren (AvH), Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), Indian DFI SIDBI, Swedfund, and pharma giant Merck & Co Inc.
"We believe that the recent COVID-19 pandemic has given an impetus to the digital transformation of healthcare. HealthQuad is committed towards creating an ecosystem of such category-defining companies that improve accessibility and affordability, and elevate overall healthcare standards in India," HealthQuad Co-founder and Chief Investment Officer Charles-Antoine Janssen said.
"We are pleased to be supported by like-minded global investors to deliver transformative impact beyond superior financial returns," he added.
HealthQuad taps into opportunities in disruptive technology-based and innovation-driven healthcare models to unlock value and create deep social impact, the statement said.
"The pandemic has further stressed the need to leverage technology to cater to the healthcare needs of such a large population. Disruptive technological solutions have the potential to vault over some of these issues and push India towards a more robust and reliable healthcare system…," HealthQuad said.
(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)
(Edited by Teja Lele Desai)
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Original Source: yourstory.com