Riskcovry: Building a platform for higher insurance penetration in India
This insurtech startup is using a plug-and-play model to streamline insurance distribution, making the process as simple as digital payments
The Indian economy is allowing insurers to play a key role in its growth by co-creating and adapting their offerings to the new digital environment and by orchestrating ecosystems. Yet, despite several options in terms of insurance investments, the lack of a single gateway to connect insurers with distributors makes a seamless insurance experience elusive. Riskcovry was conceived to cater to this lack of infrastructure. The firm is helping solve India’s insurance penetration problem by providing companies with digital infrastructure to offer products to their end users.
Riskcovry wanted to apply the innovations represented by payment gateways and processors to insurance distribution, and make it as easy for enterprise customers to distribute insurance to their end customers. As a technology platform supporting any insurance distribution use case, Riskcovry is enabling a simple, seamless and secure experience for enterprise customers to start and scale their insurance business, says Suvendu Prusty, the insurtech startup’s co-founder, director, and principal officer. “It allows companies to go live within hours with its API-in-a-box product, while also managing the regulatory and compliance requirements, business insights and AI through its infrastructure.”
As veterans of the insurance industry, the co-founders—Suvendu Prusty and Sorabh Bhandari — identified a huge opportunity to distribute insurance to alternate channels and organisations. However, insurance companies were often not ready to expose their system or core systems for distribution of various products, making them look for solutions to address the issue.
Riskcovry wanted to resolve this by developing a platform which acted as an interface between insurance companies and the distributors. With this in mind, they joined hands with Vidya S and Chiranth Patil, who brought in technology and data security information experience and startup experience, respectively.
Riskcovry is the fastest growing startup in India in the ‘Insurtech Infrastructure’ space, which is defined as a one-stop platform that can enable omni-channel distribution (DIY, assisted, embedded) for any business, across any insurance product (retail, micro group sachet, etc.) & insurer category (health, general, life), claims Prusty. In the last calendar year, it grew by more than 100% in terms of both premium and policy volume. This year, it expects to grow nearly 10x, having built the necessary digital infrastructure to power most of India’s insurance distribution market.
Since its inception, the company has onboarded 50+distribution partners across 10+industries, as well as integrated over 75 products with 32+ insurers including health, life, and general insurance players. To date, the company has issued over 5 lakh policies, and enjoys a 150k+ API call volume per day. It closed a $5.3-mn Series A round in March 2021, which was led by Omidyar Network India, with participation from new investors like Pentathlon Ventures and DMI Sparkle, as well as existing investors such as Bharat Fund, Varanium Capital and Better Capital.
A high degree of fragmentation in markets both on the supply and demand side bodes well for an insurance infra company like Riskcovry. The start-up has also begun making inroads into its first international market and is eyeing opportunities in multiple markets, since its platform has been engineered to serve almost any insurance use case across any channel, carrier, or product. Prusty says that with Covid-19 increasing awareness of the need for insurance, “we’re committed to providing our distribution partners with the best-in-class experience across the lifecycle of buy, manage, and claim.”