During one of his consulting assignments in the US, Naval Goel had a stint with AIG. This is when he started comparing the Indian market with developed markets and decided that an online insurance portal would make sense for India. He left his job and came back to India to setup PolicyX.com. PolicyX.com is one such example of a bootstrapped company that has managed to hold its ground in all the funding frenzy that has been going on.
Starting from NCR’s commercial hub Gurgaon in November, 2013, Naval started with a small team to get the portal up. After receiving IRDA approval in 2014, things started falling in place. PolicyX.com is an online insurance web aggregator company which provides free quotes comparison related to motor, health, life, child and many other insurance related products. Users can go ahead, select, and then buy the insurance.
“In a short span of roughly 2 years, we have managed to achieve more than half a million page views per month; we have an aim of reaching a target of 1 million by 2015 end,” says Naval. The company also claims to be amongst the first two companies to get approved by IRDA under its new guidelines, although it faces stiff competition from rivals like Policybazaar.com and Coverfox who are riding high on wave of investments.
At PolicyX, the company says that it is getting more than 50,000 monthly queries for various products including child plans, pension plans, health insurance, motor insurance, term plans, travel plans, etc. PolicyX.com has tie-ups with all the major insurers in India offering a variety of products. Along with their insurance partners, they do a business of about 3000-4000 policies per month from visitors to PolicyX.com. If one assumes a ticket size of Rs 10,000, the total premium would approximately be 3 crores per month.
From a team of 3 individuals in 2013, PolicyX has managed to scale up to around 100 employees in 2015. A majority of the employees are based out of the Kirti Nagar office which operates the in-house delivery centre. It provides assistance to customers: resolving their queries, and helping them choose and shortlist the best insurance product as per their requirements. The company doesn’t reveal the revenues but the model is dependent on the cut they receive from the policies sold. Naval adds, “We have grown our company very diligently without hiring any excess staff. From day one, we have been focused on the right performance matrices for business growth. We are the only company in the insurance comparison space to have reached this scale without any external funding.”
The online insurance market has just scratched the surface in India. Only about 3-4 per cent Indians have insurance, and out of that only 2% are buying insurance online. Both these numbers are expected to grow rapidly over the next few years as both the life and non life segments have tremendous opportunities to grow and the online platform will play a major role in ensuring that insurance is within the reach of each and every person who is eligible for an insurance.
Naval, further highlights the core philosophy that the company operates on by stating that the company does not believe in selling insurance products to the customers as that’s the job of insurance companies. They only guide and educate the customers in choosing and short listing the best products as per their requirement. PolicyX has made headway with its real-time dynamic charts to help customers select complex products like investment plans, etc. The company also has plan-specific videos which are created in-house to help people make the right choice.
Although it is still early days for the industry and the company but PolicyX has been operating with a long term vision. It wants to be the No.1 player in India in the online insurance space; and plan to reach there by year 2018 by continuing to provide innovative offerings and products to our customers.
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