Only 5% of SME staff has health insurance in India: Onsurity

Bengaluru-based Onsurity claims to be India's only health-tech company providing monthly comprehensive employee healthcare to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), SMEs, startups and growing businesses. With the aim of democratising technology, it was founded to empower SMEs and enterprises to solve their major problem – affordable employee healthcare and benefits.

The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way SMEs and start-ups look at healthcare benefits as a well-being and retention tool for their employees, says Yogesh Agarwal, Founder of Onsurity, a health-tech startup, which has raised $16 million in their last fundraising round. It has more than 2,000 startup and SME clients.

Are MSMEs opting for larger covers post Covid and covering a larger number of people in their organisation- on-role, off-role, contractual and freelance employees?

The pandemic has fundamentally changed the way SMEs and startups look at healthcare benefits as a well-being and retention tool for their employees. India has about 63 million SMEs which employ 330 million people, only 5 percent of them have health insurance in India. Companies have understood that if an employee during tenure of their employment faces a hospitalisation, then it is their moral obligation to support the employee in those times both mentally and financially.

The SMEs have both white-collar and blue-collars, where the latter sees high attrition. Increasingly, blue collared employees have also become more aware of the healthcare benefits provided by their employer-sponsored healthcare plan. Group health cover is also increasingly being valued for employee retention, especially in the IT sector which is seeing a flood of attritions and resignations. Employees moving from MNCs to startups are also looking out for similar health protection that they had with their earlier employers.

Employers have started to provide higher valued benefits than a bare minimum offering such that if in case any hospitalisation happens, the benefit amount is sufficient in all cases. Healthcare benefits are now seen by companies increasingly as an investment rather than a cost to the organisation which have helped several employees move back to offices from their hometowns.

Indian startups and MSMEs have also started offering extensive wellness features for their employees in their corporate healthcare subscription plans. These include a focus on mental well-being, complete annual health check-up for employees and their family members, access of healthcare membership for employee's elderly family members, and segmented OPD Plans for working women population: maternity and IVF treatment focused plans. 

There's a monthly subscription insurance model for employers. How does it help make health insurance affordable for SMEs and MSMEs?  

From retailers and wholesalers, small consulting firms, food and beverage outlets, trading companies, small service centres, boutique marketing agencies and similar businesses, IT and ITeS firms, providing affordable and customised healthcare benefits to their employees has been a priority to attract and retain talent. However, with rising medical inflation, the affordability of health insurance costs has been an area of concern for SMEs.

Therefore, monthly subscriptions to healthcare benefits do not make a dent into the working capital from the company's account. CAPEX/ OPEX accounts of a company get greater relief if there is no annual expenditure to facilitate. It also ensures that the employer is paying for the months that the employee is with the team and not the entire year. The businesses also may earn interest on the money or simply use it for other priorities.

Advantages of group health cover Vs an individual health cover?

Group health insurance comes with many advantages – coverage from day one for pre-existing illnesses, maternity cover, also a parental cover is offered by several companies with the biggest advantage being that the premium cost is borne by the employer. Another major advantage is that group health insurance is affordable since it is purchased in bulk or for multiple people at the same time, helping in diversification of risk. Individual health insurance is comparatively expensive due chances of an anti-selection.

How does the technology platform that Onsurity has built help in serving customers, especially in raising and tracking claims?

Onsurity provides a self-serve platform where organisations can purchase flexible and customised health benefit subscriptions for their employees. By leveraging the transformative power of big data and AI, we have enabled technology led solutions providing app-based claim assistance, doctors team assistance, app based wellness benefits, prior history of claims and seamless processing of cashless and handholding for reimbursement claims.

We have helped bring customised and affordable healthcare benefits to SMEs by reducing the time taken to opt for insurance to less than a couple of minutes to sign up for comprehensive healthcare benefits as compared to months taken in negotiating with insurers.

What is the growth and revenue that Onsurity has seen in the current year?

We have onboarded 2,000 companies in the past one year by democratizing healthcare in India through technology related solutions and helped empower over 2 lakh employees of SMEs, startups and small businesses with comprehensive healthcare benefits. We aim to cover 10,000 SMEs in the next one year and offer healthcare benefits to over 10 million SMEs in the next five years.