Witnessing traction in both retail & group health insurance segments: SANA.Insure Director

Three entrepreneurs - Srinath Mukherji, Nayan Goswami, and Vivek Narain - in 2017 came together to set up SANA.Insure, an online health insurance aggregator with an aim to simplify the health insurance space, which is riddled with complex conditionalities. The Gurgaon-based startup that features over 150 plans on its website, provided by 16 general and health insurance companies, has made the buying process easier through comparison among various plans along with its specific recommendations. In a conversation with Bizz Buzz, company's cofounder & Director, Srinath Mukherji said that the company provides an absolutely unbiased platform with regard to its recommendations as it doesn't have any special tie-up with any insurance company to sell its products. Currently, more than 15,000 people have bought a health insurance policy from SANA.Insure, via group and individual policies, he said. The insurtech platform is also looking at raising funds from venture capital and private equity funds for driving its next phase of growth

Our efforts are driven at educating the clients before they buy a plan, which is sustainable. We are absolutely honest. We don't have any deals or understanding or get any special commission from any health insurer. This makes us confident that whatever recommendations or advise, we give will have no bias toward any insurer

We have also put some very powerful rule engines to colour-code these plans. One way, we have also tried to help the community through the SANACheck, which is free. If you enter your existing details of the healthcare plans, it gives a detailed analysis of the plan immediately. The good part is everything is standardised

How was the business during the pandemic as mass migration to digital platforms have happened during the last one year?

When we started three years back, we knew that this space was very much on a rise. Especially, the digital distribution of health insurance, both with under penetration of health insurance combined with lower online buying by consumers, is a good space to operate. That was the situation three years back. We built the brand in these three years. Then, the Covid pandemic has changed the situation. The pandemic situation has changed the digital scene in past months. The awareness, desire and need for health insurance has certainly gone up due to the Covid pandemic. People are much aware of the healthcare cost which is not possible (to manage) though salary, borrowings from friends and families. That is a huge benefit. Also, what has happened is that the competition has intensified with much players. There are many sites which are offering health insurance products now.

What is your differentiating factor for SANA.Insure as an insurance broker when this space is crowded with so many players?

That takes us to the next question which is how are we different from other players. We are different in three aspects. Firstly, we have decided that we will specialize in health insurance. Though we have a license for general insurance products, we realise that health insurance is a unique category for retail. There are many complexities in it. Life insurance is sort of binary. But in health insurance, the benefits and conditions are many. Also, the consequences for not interpreting them in time are also quite severe. Because, you will be left high and dry if the claims are not settled because of the conditions that you didn't take note of. We specialise in this aspect. If there are no complexities, there will be no need of specialisations. We have certified all the plans into a standardized form-based on parameters. We have 150 parameters, based on which we have standardized these plans and differentiate between these plans. We displayed around 45 standards in our website. So, we have analyzed and represented in a friendly way for customers.

This plays a significant role as there is a certain level of mistrust among people that claims are not settled by health insurance players. Therefore, there is a lot of transparency and visibility required in a friendly way. No human being can decipher all the conditions and explain it to the health insurance buyers. Therefore, we decided to go digital.

We have also put some very powerful rule engines to colour-code these plans. One way, we have also tried to help the community is through the SANACheck, which is free. If you enter your existing details of the healthcare plans, it gives a detailed analysis of the plan immediately. The good part is everything is standardised. For example, the room rents (of hospitals) for various cities will differ for the customer, which has been standardised as per the customer's city.

So, SANA is educating the customers on various health insurance plans through the platform. That's what you are saying?

Yes. We are not only selling the health insurance plans. Because, if you only sell without making the customer aware about the various conditions, it will not have the desired outcome. Our efforts are driven at educating the clients before they buy a plan, which is sustainable. We are absolutely honest. We don't have any deals or understanding or get any special commission from any health insurer. This makes us confident that whatever recommendations or advise, we give will have no bias toward any insurer. It doesn't matter to us from which insurer, you purchased as it really doesn't matter to us. This is powerful because our recommendations are absolutely unbiased.

How many users are using SANA platform now? What is kind of growth your company has seen in the last one year?

We have seen good traction in our platform. In fact, we have around 15,000 lives are already covered including group and family health schemes. We are also now spreading the word more intensely among retail customers. With SANACheck and a recently launched recommendation engine, which we are examining very intensely now, we are hopeful to get many more users. We are getting all our things together. Our platform is now receiving a lot of organic visits. In competitive environment, we want to spread the word.

How is the demand in group insurance business segment for you?

We are doing both. We are specialist in health insurance serving customers across the spectrum. We have also seen good traction in the enterprise-side of business.

Are you looking for raising funds as the company eyes faster customer acquisitions in the retail space?

We are bootstrapped so far and have invested more than $500,000 (seed funds) as founders. As far as raising funds are required, we are looking at funds from institutional sources for our next phase of growth.