DigiSafe - Securing rural India with bite-sized insurance products
Suman RoyChoudhury and Anupam Shrey, Co-Founders and Directors at DigiSafe, share their views on how they are bridging the insurance gap in rural regions through aggressive insurance penetration
India’s local insurance broker, DigiSafe is on a mission to empower India’s rural populace by offering simplified and affordable insurance products at their doorstep. It provides bite-sized products that span across motor, health, livestock, crop and life insurance. Headquartered in Pune, Digisafe is successfully operating across Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, and West Bengal.
Suman RoyChoudhury and Anupam Shrey, Co-Founders and Directors at DigiSafe, share their views on how they are bridging the insurance gap in rural regions through aggressive insurance penetration
Q1. What is DigiSafe? Please tell us about your products and services.
Offering simplified and affordable products, we at DigiSafe act as India’s local broker to serve insurance to people in rural areas. We provide an extensive portfolio of insurance products across various verticals including motor, healthcare, crop, livestock, and life insurance. The products are delivered at the doorstep of our end-customers through DigiOne, our flagship partnership program that is driven by a combination of physical and digital modes. We are also in the process of developing a mobile application called Mera Assistant which will assist the rural population in making informed decisions about their insurance purchases by acting as their decision support system.
Q2. Who all are a part of the founding team and how did you start this venture?
Digisafe was conceptualized on the basis of our decade-long extensive research and analysis by all the members of our founding team which includes Mallikharjun Kukunari, Suman RoyChoudhury, Anupam Shrey, Rajat Dhar, and Ashwin Arora.
Having spent our lives in culturally diverse backgrounds like Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Telangana we all have acquired the knowledge that is required for DigiSafe. We started this venture having explored the crop insurance segment across several states in India. We finally concluded our observational analysis in a localized survey under the Flagship Agricultural Insurance Scheme, PMFBY, culminating in us starting this company.
Q3. What is your business model?
We are a one-of-a-kind insurtech firm that not only creates insurance solutions with insurance companies but also makes them easily accessible to buyers.
Every insurance policy that we sell gets a commission from the insurance companies. We connect all the dots of the ecosystem where customers can choose the right insurance products as per their requirements, from different companies through our PoSPs. We provide our products and services through a hybrid model of physical and digital modes for the comfort of its patrons.
Q4. Please tell us about 1gram insurance and the Mera Assistant app.
We have a unique insurance program in DigiOne Gram insurance, which will aid our clients with various services like pre-sales, post-sales, and claim services. It will bring all the people in a village under one insurance umbrella to provide efficient insurance cover to each member. We also offer 1 gram insurance through a phygital model which aligns simultaneously with government schemes like Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) and will bring further reform in the market.
The Mera Assistant application will serve as a decision support system by aiding the users to make informed decisions by gathering information from the field, community, and agricultural data. It will provide predictive analysis and an insurance dashboard to keep the users updated with the weather, crop advisory, and government initiatives. This will help not only in mitigating risks but also in promoting the focus on revenue generation. We ensure high-speed claim assistance and end-to-end solutions at each doorstep.
Q5. Do you plan to launch more products in the future?
We are planning to leverage our geographical reach across the country in rural areas and slowly move towards Tier 2 and Tier 3 semi-urban markets to maximize the impact of DigiOne. We aim to develop all our channel partners into entrepreneurs with a sustainable source of income, thus making DigiSafe a complete ecosystem for its customers. Our core vision is to adopt as many villages as we can and ensure 100% insurance coverage for the population as a whole in those villages.
Q6. Please tell us about the challenges and the opportunities that you have witnessed.
We managed to overcome various hurdles, a few of which were creating simple and affordable products per the rural population's requirements and identifying DigiOne while spreading awareness to make our customers resonate with the concept.
Rural markets have a huge scope for growth which entails cover for crops that remain uncovered under schemes like Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, small businesses started by groups of women, catastrophe bonds, etc. We believe that the key to penetration in rural areas lies in the simplicity, easy administration, and affordability of the products. Product customization will further pay dividends in building trust as agricultural vocations are dependent on various factors including weather, innovation in policies, or natural disasters, and having our policies align with these unforeseen contingencies is a must.
Q7. What is your current user base and how much growth are you expecting in the near future?
We have been able to insure 500 plus people in 14 states since the start of our operations in September 2021. We plan on capitalizing on the existing number of agents we have from 100 to 10,000 in the next 2 years and spread our services to all suburban and rural areas across India. We aim to eliminate the financial uncertainty that looms over rural people, by providing them with a sense of confidence when it comes to making informed decisions, employment opportunities as well as revenue generation
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02:05 PM IST