Previously, the insurance customers were facing a rough patch due to the inconsiderate outlook of the insurance industry. There was lack of customer-centricity, and insurance companies made profits from policy surrender charges. All of this changed when a group of neophyte, with no experience in the insurance industry, started to visualize what the insurance space can be crafted into. These visionaries imagined a place that would be solely customer-centric, where the consumers could find transparent insurance information and a feature to research and compare products, so they could buy what they actually want. Yashish Dahiya (CEO) and Alok Bansal (CFO) turned this imagination to reality and created an integrated platform called Policybazaar.
Policybazaar was started as an insurance comparison website, but after a decade long period, it has transformed into a comprehensive digital channel offering end-to-end insurance solutions for the consumers.
Founded in 2008, Policybazaar is now India’s foremost insurance aggregator and a leading fintech player globally. It started as the customer-centric company and even today runs on the same philosophy—Customer First and Sustained Profitability for the entire Insurtech ecosystem. It works on the mission of building a safety net for 250 million-plus households in India. Currently, it records more than 10 lakh insurance purchases on its platform every month and hosts 500+ products from 40+ insurers.
Strong relationships with all prominent insurance companies
Policybazaar is a B2C entity, which caters to the entire population of India looking to weave a financial social security net for themselves and their families. To summarize concisely, anyone looking for protection from death, disease and disability outcomes, and those looking to achieve life goals through investment in insurance is the potential customer it would cater to. The company has proficiency in financial services due to which it delivers excellent services and helps its customers to make balanced and beneficial decisions.
Furthermore, in order to chase its vision of making India a socially secure nation, the company has partnered with the prominent public and private insurance companies across India. The company utilizes these partnerships to streamline their knowledge and business operations and provide the best possible services to their consumers. Policybazaar’s team also feels fortunate to receive the assistance of a robust group of investors that believed in the company’s vision.
Compare, Buy and Save at Policybazaar
Today, Policybazaar has become one of the largest insurance destinations in the country. It is specialized in making a comparative analysis of the insurance products. The platform has been useful to empower the Indian consumer and give them the flexibility of buying the insurance products that fulfill their unique requirements.
It brings an unbiased comparison of financial services from all major insurance companies to its customers. Moreover, to help consumers with their motor insurances, Policybazaar has introduced its game-changing product, “Self-Inspection Video”. This product helps customers to renew lapsed motor insurance within a few hours. This feature is expedient because in a country like India, nearly 30 out of 100 vehicles go lapse on motor insurance renewals. Further, to enhance the platform it has added the “Self-Claims Video” feature that helps the customers to file instant claims, which improved the customer experience of dealing with the accidental damages.
Policybazaar platform embraces the online systems and offers an integrated platform to help the customers directly link to insurance companies, these benefits customers with significant savings on their investment expenses. Leveraging the latest tech, the platform also offers backing of Chatbot and human-assisted buying experience on the portal to augment the services.
The Trailblazer of the Organization
As aforementioned, the pioneers Yashish Dahiya (CEO), and Alok Bansal (CFO) established Policybazaar as a key force in establishing an informative online financial services platform in India. Over the years, the duo has scaled the growth of the company in terms of revenue and customer acquisition to become the largest platform of financial solutions in India. Alok is not just a great leader but also a great sports enthusiast and has an abiding love for physics. In addition, he is a bibliophile and his favorite book is ‘Atlas Shrugged’.
Yashish’s childhood has been a disciplined one, as he belonged to a family of army officers and went to Lawrence School, Sanawar for early education. He has completed his engineering from IIT-Delhi followed by a stint at IIM-A and INSEAD. Yashish has always been determined about establishing a business from scratch. However, he reasonably started his entrepreneurial journey by giving tuitions to students pursuing MBA and even was earning well, but parents nagged him to get a regular job. After working for companies like Brain & Co in the UK and First Europa, he started his journey with Policybazaar. Yashish believes that people—customers, business partners, and employees—are the centre of his work. He being the telamon of the company holds the sixth sense that has come handy in the company’s favor. Together with Alok, he has built a stellar team at PB who he can trust blindly.
Fostering Growth and Achieving the Impossible
Policybazaars’ sole goal is to diverge towards fostering growth and achieve the impossible. To achieve this target, the company is constantly striving to develop new products and services for its consumers. The purpose of introducing new products is not for the means of profitability but to add value in consumers’ life, so that they are able to instil a sense of financial security in them. Policybazaar functions in India, which makes it favourable with the current scenario of the country. Having said that, the financial security is critical because in India there is no social security particularly post-retirement, this makes insurance the only remedy for the woes.
Apart from benefiting the home country, Policybazaar is also planning to expand its roots at the global level to provide financial aid. Currently, Fintech venture Paisabazaar is doing well, being the first international venture. Yashish enthusiastically commented, “It’s exciting times and we are looking to achieve what no other consumer internet company has achieved in India—operational profitability with sustainability, and all this by keeping consumer interest above all because I am okay with losing money but compromising consumer interest—NEVER!”
The Success Mantra of Policybazaar
The journey from a start-up company to a leading company is not easy. Policybazaar has also faced the regular hurdles that every company faces whilst expanding or starting up. The companies would revolve around finding initial capital and overcoming regulatory roadblocks. However, these obstacles did not obstruct Policybazaar; it has always survived and conquered the challenges. Besides, the industry has also named it as the germ of the industry due to its uncanny ability to adapt and survive. The team has a hidden mantra up their sleeve—‘spot the silver lining and keep cracking’, which has contributed hugely to the success.
Protecting consumers from the ‘3Ds’
Yashish shares that in India, 30 million+ households spend more on medical treatment than their annual income and 60% of OPD expenses are borne out of personal savings. He believes that it is the industry’s duty to provide greater protection to consumers against the 3Ds—Death, Disability, and Disease, which cripples consumers the most. The change the industry needs is how it approaches the consumers. Policybazaar has always been customer-driven and given customers the priority, while other company’s approach towards the consumer is quite different. Regardless of not being beneficial, the product is still sold to the consumer. However, the online channels have been trying to address this impediment, but problems remain and this contributes to mis-selling. Yashish encourages that the industry, irrespective of the channel should put a blanket ban on products that do not keep consumer interest above all.
Envisioning the Future of the Insurance Industry
Looking at the current scenario, Yashish predicts a positive future of the insurance industry. Specifically, the FinTech space is emerging rapidly and is on the cusp of fostering a fourth tech revolution in the country. Yashish added, “In my opinion, as businesses try to understand their consumers better to offer them personalized services, I envision further development taking place in the domain of progressive behavioural analysis.” Foreseeing the revolution, the predicted changes can be that the businesses will work on voice data processing and sentimental analysis, through these points they will be able to gauge the consumer feedback. This will help them understand the pinpoints that need change. Furthermore, the key area for investment will be in augmenting the field-force management systems, as it will directly affect the operations and profitability of the business.
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