Plum has raised $4.1 million, led by Sequoia Capital India’s Surge and Tanglin Venture Partners. The funding will be used to expand into new markets, build new distribution channels, hire top talent and further develop product and tech. Existing investors, including Incubate Fund, also participated in the round.
The company is part of the fourth cohort of Surge, a bi-annual scale-up program for startups in India and Southeast Asia.
Launched in March 2020, Plum aims to reinvent how group health insurance works in India by making it affordable and accessible for businesses of all sizes. India currently has one of the lowest penetration rates for health insurance in the world, with only 18% of urban employees and 14% of rural areas receiving coverage of some kind. Over 50 million Indians fall into poverty every year due to their inability to finance health issues.
Plum’s health platform coupled with transparent pricing aims to help more businesses reap the benefits of insurance for their employees. Plum provides coverage for $10 per year per person.
Many Indian businesses find the insurance purchasing process to be tedious, opaque and costly, with the entire process taking months to set up. To address these issues, Plum has forged new underwriting and fraud detection measures with a wide range of insurance companies. Plum has partnered with healthcare providers in dental care, fitness, diet and nutrition plans, yoga, virtual doctor consultations and mental health care.
Plum provides companies with a dashboard to manage employees’ insurance and an employee app with 24/7 support for queries, claims, and other issues. It claims that it has seem a 200% growth quarter-on-quarter, securing US $1 million worth of insurance premiums within the first three-quarters of launch. The platform is currently used by more than 200 companies, including Twilio, Label Life, Classplus, Happay and Sunidhi Group.
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