Inka Insurance changing the road map for Insurance

Vaibhav Kathju, Founder & CEO, Inka Insurance gives insights of his company’s growth, it’s business model and digital platform

How would you describe your company's business model?

Inka is a customer-centric, digital-first insurtech platform for making the insurance journey easier and more personalized in urban India. Our business model is fundamentally trust-oriented, transparent, and tech-driven. We offer free data-driven, hyper-personalised insurance recommendations through our proprietary tool, the Inka Insurance Report (IIR), which analyzes over 2,500 parameters, including credit bureau information, in order to enable users to make the most effective coverage decisions.

How is it different from traditional business models?

Inka fundamentally redefines the insurance experience by shifting from the traditional product-push model to a truly customer-centric, digital-first approach. Unlike conventional methods that often lead with pre-defined policies, Inka leverages advanced technology to deliver a hyper-personalized Inka Insurance Report (IIR) within 60 seconds, drawing insights from over 2,500 data points, including credit bureau information. This empowers us to conduct a comprehensive user profile analysis, precisely determine their holistic insurance needs, and then objectively match them with the most suitable products, fostering a trust-oriented and transparent journey that completely avoids hard-selling.

How is the company growing?

Since our rebrand in December 2023, Inka has demonstrated huge early traction. Over 70,000 users have signed up with us, and 30,000+ Inka Insurance Reports have been generated. The uncovered gross premium opportunity till now is ₹275 crore. We expand organically and by word-of-mouth through the power of our credibility in the mindsets of digitally literate consumers who value objective, clutter-free endorsements. We are seed-funded and supported by noted investors like Antler India and Marwadi Catalysts. Such funds have enabled us to scale responsibly, refine our product, and invest in trust-building in the insurance value chain.

What are the revenue streams for the company?

Our revenue model is built on strategic partnerships with leading and trusted insurance providers. We earn commissions through these collaborations, but importantly, these commissions do not influence our recommendations in any way. Our algorithm and advisory processes are designed to be commission-neutral, ensuring that the advice we provide remains transparent, data-driven, and solely in the best interest of the user.

We have established arrangements with a diverse set of highly reputed insurance partners, including HDFC Life, ICICI Prudential, HDFC Ergo, ICICI Lombard, Aditya Birla Health, Niva Bupa, and several others.

What was the rationale for starting your kind of company?

Inka’s origins were intensely personal and organic. In early 2023, I had been casually counseling acquaintances and friends mis-sold insurance. Those informal chats created a disturbing pattern, the more people I spoke with, the more obvious it was: urban consumers in India are overwhelmed by choices and starved of simplification. I co-founded Inka out of the desire to fix this. We envisioned a platform that would educate, not sell; a platform that puts consumers at the center by simplifying insurance by means of data, empathy, and technology.

What is the potential for the company in India?

Inka has huge potential in India. India has a large and growing population of people who are underinsured and miseducated, particularly in the urban salaried class. With growing digital adoption and financial acumen, there is more and more need for straightforward, easy-to-understand products. The government’s zeal for digital public infrastructure and financial inclusion could hardly make the timing more opportune. Inka, with its clarity-first, non-partisan design, is exactly the right product for the emerging segment. Our model addresses exactly the same anxieties plaguing the business doubts over trust, complexity, and lack of proper information, thus making our value proposition both relevant and scalable.

Is there scope for the company to grow internationally?

Indeed. While our near focus is the Indian market, the issues of mis-selling, over-obfuscation, and over-complication magically exist all over the world. Other Asian markets, African nations, and even developed nations have the same issues, especially in the expat communities or in the gig economy. Because our technology stack, especially the IIR engine, is modular and re-usable, we can consider cross-border opportunities, particularly where the insurance ecosystem is fractional in regions. All the same, our international expansion will be intentional and gradual in order for us to have our home proposition solid and credible before we go out.

How has the company evolved?

Inka has transformed tremendously from a people’s movement starting from the bottom with informal counseling sessions to a formidable tech-powered platform. First known as Insurance Padosi, the business was more about awareness and education. But as we probed deeper, we recognized the requirement for structured, scalable remedies. That is when we rebranded in December 2023 as Inka with a refined focus on personalization and diagnostics. We have transformed from idea to product, from insights to execution, from acquaintances to 70,000+ beneficiaries—in one year. Every phase of transformation has strengthened our central conviction: empathy enabled by technology has the potential to revive trust in insurance.

What has been the revenues in the recent past?

As we are a recently launched and seed-funded startup venture, we have been concentrating in the past year on product development, user onboarding, and building trust, not on aggressive monetization. That said, we have in fact already been generating revenue through partnership arrangements with leading insurers. Our gross premium opportunity of ₹275 crore provides us with some sense of the revenue potential, and as more users convert into policies, we will see steady growth. We are set up well to scale revenues dramatically in the next financial year as the user base goes deeper and repeat engagement builds up.

What are your future plans?

In the years ahead, we plan to build India’s most trustworthy insurance experience platform. We are expanding horizontally in life, health, and general insurance and accelerating our diagnostic and advisory engines. A few of the key areas of focus are:

1. Extending Product Innovation: Adding AI capabilities to the IIR engine in order to enable more granular and predictable recommendations. We are also launching the Voice AI Feature, which will enhance and provide a convenient experience to consumers.

2. Distribution Expansion: Partnership with employers, fintech platforms, and digital banks in the distribution of embedded insurance products.

3. Regional Language Accessibility: So as to reach Bharat, and not just India, we intend to make multilingual versions of the platform.

4. Crisis & Specialized Coverage: We are offering niche products, including cardiac and cancer cover, through collaborations with insurers.

5. Financial Literacy Initiatives: Aimed at our education-first approach, we shall invest in creating bite-sized, quality content that converts insurance ideas into actionable elements at various life stages for the users.

Long term, we see Inka evolve into an insurance manufacturing platform, a platform where consumers don’t just buy insurance but understand, track, and make the most out of it throughout life.