Toffee slices, dices insurance to crack Indian millennial market
India-based insurtech start-up Toffee is looking to crack the millennial market by selling micro-insurance, offering policies only when a customer requires them. For example, with only 6%-7% of Indians taking out comprehensive health insurance, Toffee offers coverage for specific diseases, such as Dengue fever, co-founder Nishant Jain said. Toffee is also aiming to speed up the claims process in India, reducing it from the typical two-to-three weeks to as little as two days, he said. 

EXCLUSIVE— Less is more is not often a philosophy that’s applied to insurance, at least not in the United States.

When it comes to India things might be different. That’s why insurtech startup Toffee is offering consumers in the country more tailored, “bite-sized” products, rather than less flexible, more traditional insurance plans.

“Six to seven percent of people in India have formal health insurance, so there’s a huge population that’s not covered,” Nishant Jain, co-founder and chief product officer for Toffee told Bank Innovation. “The problem we were trying to solve was, how do we get Indians to buy health insurance online?”

As so much of the population remains uninsured, the insurance market in India represents a vast opportunity for companies, Jain said, especially when it comes to millennial customers—specifically, those between 20 to 29 years of age. Toffee is not focusing solely on the health insurance market, but is launching products for a variety of use cases.

That’s the segment Toffee is focusing on, offering “micro” insurance products engineered to cover particular instances where insurance might be useful to those millennial consumers: rent, backpacking, or commuting insurance, for example.

“There’s a huge market there which no one is trying to grab today,” Jain said, of the millennial insurance industry in India, partially because they don’t “need” overly complicated, jargon-heavy, or more comprehensive policies, Jain said.

The company, which officially launched three weeks ago according to Jain, is currently live with three of its micro products, including a policy for Dengue fever treatment, a daily commuting policy for travelers who might be “exposed” to accidents,” and a “Globetrotter” policy for international travel.

Other products, including policies for rent, a “Stay Fit” policy and a backpacking policy (for accidents or other events that may occur during a backpacking trip), will follow over the next few months, the company said. It is currently partnering with other firms in order to bring its products to customers, rather than going direct to consumer, Jain said.

“We are doing B2C marketing, better to go from B2B2C,” Jain said of Toffee’s approach, adding that the company has signed with several distribution partners including 1mg, which is “India’s largest online pharmacy,” Jain said.

Toffee’s main benefit to its distribution partners is the fact that it is a fully digital, mobile-enabled platform, Jain said, which enables tasks such as filing a claim to be completed with a much higher speed than they would be traditionally.

“Claiming in India is very difficult, it takes [customers] 2 to 3 weeks just to get the money in their accounts,” Jain said. “80% of claims, we can approve, money in your account, in 2 days.”

Whether “bite-sized” insurance is the way to the millennial market in India remains to be seen—it’s only been three weeks after all—but it is certainly something to keep watching.

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