There is a huge insurance penetration gap between rural and urban regions. This place’s rural at a huge financial disadvantage, which we see as the plight of the rural folk.
But as the saying goes, if there is a problem, there is a solution for it. A Pune-based bootstrapped local digital insurtech start-up called DigiSafe could be a solution or a model for the permanent solution.
They focus on the finances of rural India through reducing risks and through a variety of insurance products by enabling phygital solutions. Phygital is a technology that links digital and physical worlds providing a unique interactive experience for the users.
These simplified and affordable products range from motor vehicles, crops, livestock, and life insurance for the rural folk. In FY20 insurance has penetrated 3.76%. That is a slight increase from last year’s 3.7%.
Anupam Shrey, the co-founder of DigiSafe, has said that the rural area is underinsured, with only 3% insured out of a population of 833mn. They concluded their observational analysis through a localised survey of PMFBY.
The other founders are Suman Roy Choudhury, Mallikarjun Kukunuri, Rajat Dhar and Ashwin Arora. It was registered in November 2020 and launched its operations in September 2021.
They expect to expand into Tier 2 and 3 semi-urban markets.
The rural economy rests on the shaky foundation of agriculture, which is a victim of climate change and weather phenomena. Even PMFBY covered only a few crops. Understanding the situation the insurtech brings in small, affordable insurance products.
These products will include a wide range of matters related to ordinary rural lives, from motor vehicles to crops and life insurance.
This will help the insurance to penetrate deep into rural regions, which will increase the revenue for the farmers with lower risks.
They then launched DigiOne.
It is a partnership program in association with its channel partners where they identify, train and develop individuals to be certified point-of-sale persons or PoSPs, who will distribute insurance through physical, digital, or both combined.
They also introduced 1 Gram Insurance, which focuses on being one village, one entity, that will extend and cover every household of the village. It will be distributed through phygital means and relies on data from agriculture and the community.
They cooperate with ten insurance companies and partnered with Aquaconnect, Niruthi Technology, and Ecosystem, Wingsure Inc., where they will co-create insurance solutions for the rural market.
They will soon release an app called Mera Assistant. This will help rural folks being their digital support system by collecting field, community, and agricultural information.
This data will help them predict the revenue and update them with weather and government initiatives.
One of the founders, Roy Choudhury, is confident that his company will be a trusted brand in the rural community. They intend to create a supportive ecosystem with faster claim assistance and end-to-end solutions.
Follow and connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter
