Plum, an employee health insurance platform, has launched its report – ‘Is maternity under-insured in India?.’ The report states that maternity covers offered by corporates are not in alignment with the rising cost of maternity in urban cities in India. Average cost of child-birth (vaginal births) in tier 1 cities and metros in India at private hospitals ranges between Rs. 45,000 – Rs. 55,000. On the other hand, the cost of C-sections in private hospitals can range between Rs. 70,000 and 2,00,000, depending on the level of complications.

However, while 66% of Plum’s customers have adopted maternity covers, a majority of them cover expenses up to Rs. 50,000 for up to 2 children. Only 15% of Plum’s customers, which are new-age companies, have taken covers between Rs. 1,00,000 and Rs. 1,25,000 for maternity. These companies include Twilio, Mintmesh, Evenflow, Vonage, Ironsides among others.

Through its report, Plum urges all organisations, to make workplaces more favourable for women employees by providing them with adequate insurance for maternity (important note: maternity is an optional benefit and many organisations do not opt for it due to employee demographics and cost).  Standalone retail policies for maternity are non-existent in India. Additionally in retail health insurance, there is a 90-day waiting period from the time of the child-birth for the baby to get medical insurance coverage. Group Health Insurance (GHI) policies can cover female employees and female spouses for expenses on maternity treatment, infertility and any prenatal complications and offer a baby day cover from day 1.

According to Plum’s report, ideal maternity benefits should provide a minimum cover up to Rs. 1,00,000 for tier1 cities and should have baby day covers from the very first day. The report further suggests that for workplaces to be considered equitable, they must consider the inclusion of surrogacy and adoption leave policies and benefits, same-sex partner maternity and leave benefits and paternity leave and benefits.

Abhishek Poddar, CEO and Cofounder of Plum says, “Companies today are in a position to do much better for their employees. This is not about insurance alone, this is an opportunity for us to kindle conversations around workplace equity, social justice and forward thinking. When it comes to education, women in our country are doing better than men (i.e, growing at a faster rate), but as a culture, we seem to be making it harder for them to return to work after giving birth. Companies have a responsibility towards this end, first by having clear-cut policies and then implementing them with passion and without prejudice.”

Plum itself has a Rs. 100,000 cover for maternity and a baby day one cover. He further adds, “The inclusion of a comprehensive maternity cover in Group Health Insurance comes with multiple advantages. Besides the shorter waiting period and baby cover from day 1, it goes a long way in making the workplace more equitable for women and providing them with a sense of financial security.”

Also Read: Health insurance policy : what is the need? 

Healthcare inflation in India is rising at 18-20% annually. With this backdrop, lack of proper maternity benefits could be one of the key reasons for a drop in the percentage of the women workforce from 26% in 2005 to 20.3% in 2019. Plum, which counsels its clients on the best health and wellness benefits, strongly advocates a higher benchmark for maternity benefits in group health insurance. The company also aims to accelerate the pace of health insurance adoption in India and encourage all businesses to think about employees’ health-first.

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Plum, a Bengaluru based group health insurance startup, providing modern health benefits to corporates, has raised INR 7 Crores in seed funding. Plum is on a mission to enable employee health insurance for over 1.1 million companies in India by reinventing how health insurance works. The company plans to use the funding to scale business & engineering teams so as to solve some of the hardest engineering challenges in Insurtech and build innovative distribution channels. Within just 4 months of launch, Plum has managed to get over 100 companies as customers.

Plum, through its online platform, www.plumhq.com, provides employers & employees with customizable plans, transparent pricing, and high-quality healthcare experience. The platform understands the needs of a corporate and guides them on setting up their group health insurance in less than 60 mins. Plum combines modern technologies with robust processes to deliver unprecedented simplicity & efficiency.

Plum additionally helps employees with improved health benefits including doctor consultations, health check-ups, fitness & yoga, mental wellness, nutrition and dental care. The platform enables ease of experience for employees with guided claims support. Plum has an insurance intermediary license from IRDA. Taking the current situation into account, Plum also offers COVID-19 cover as an offering to its customers, however big or small they are.  Plum’s clients include Twilio, Instawork, Posist, RevvSales, The Label Life, Growfit, StayAbode, Fampay, myHQ, and Jiny.

India’s population will rely on employer-sponsored health insurance:

Plum was founded in late 2019 by Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora who comes with rich experience in financial technologies and insurance distribution. Abhishek, a Stanford University alumnus has worked with Google and McKinsey and built technology companies. Saurabh led product & engineering teams at Freshworks (he had previously built Airwoot, an AI-based CRM company which got acquired by Freshworks). Abhishek and Saurabh were joined by Debankur Biswas, an FMS alumnus with 17 years of experience in building insurance distribution and has led operations for Insurtech player BIMA in Srilanka & Bangladesh.

Abhishek Poddar, Co-founder & CEO, Plum says, “When we look at other countries like the US, we see that a high percentage of the population is covered under employer-provided health insurance. We believe that India too will move in that direction, where a significant portion of India’s population will rely on employer-sponsored health insurance. With Plum, we want to enable every last company in India to provide a high-quality health cover to their employees, no matter how small or big they are. We want to be the de-facto platform for employee health insurance, initially in India, and later in other developing markets like SE Asia and Latam.”

Saurabh Arora, Co-founder and CTO of Plum, added,  “At Plum, we are imagining group health insurance products from 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% cheaper than existing market pricing, to companies as small as 7 employees. At Plum, we are building a truly online insurance platform that covers frontend (distribution) and backend (pricing, carrier and compliances).”

Nao Murakami, Founder and General Partner at Incubate Fund India said, “Health insurance is now becoming a “must-have” product in India, especially in the post-COVID world. It is an essential component for companies to attract talent. However, 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. Abhishek and Saurabh have a very clear vision which aligns with what we see as a future of health insurance in India”.

The group health insurance market in India, which is almost 50% of the total health insurance market, is expected to grow to INR 100,000 crores by 2025. It has seen an annual growth of about 25% in the last few years and is doubling every three years.  The seed funding 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.

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