Bengaluru-based digital insurance startup Plum, run by Plum Benefits Private Ltd, has raised $15.6 Mn in its Series A funding round led by Tiger Global to build insurance products for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that have a smaller team and cannot afford to pay annual premiums. The company is also looking to build deeper application program interface (API) integrations with other insurers like ICICI Lombard, Care Health, Star Health, and New India Assurance. Plum Benefits will use the funding to scale its engineering, business development, and operations teams.
Existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, Tanglin Venture Partners, Incubate Fund, and Gemba Capital also participated in the fundraising, as did several angel investors including Kunal Shah (founder, Cred); Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini, and Hemesh Singh (founders, Unacademy); Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain and Ishan Bansal (founders, Groww); Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava (founders, Livspace); and Douglas Feirstein (co-founder, Hired).
Only last year, Plum had raised $5 Mn in seed rounds from Surge, Tanglin Venture Partners, Angellist India, Gemba Capital, Tracxn Labs, Incubate India, Sequoia Capital, and HHV’s Shrishti Sahu. With this latest round, the startup has raised a total of $20.6 million in funding, to date.
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Founded in 2019 by Abhishek Poddar and Saurabh Arora, Plum Benefits specializes in providing health insurance support to small businesses and startups. It claims to have onboarded more than 600 organizations including Groww, Unacademy, Twilio, CleverTap, Urban Ladder, smallcase, and Simpl.
“Plum aims to reach a milestone of 10 million lives insured by 2025, by changing employee health insurance space. With Plum, we are making the process transparent, affordable, and easy, using tech at scale,” Poddar said. “The adoption of health insurance by startups, SMEs and corporates is increasing exponentially, and is further accelerated by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.”
“Healthcare in India is seeing a phenomenal change. Healthcare cost is seeing inflation that is two times the general inflation. India is witnessing new and unexpected diseases every day – COVID-19 is a stark example of this. Treatments of these diseases can wipe out entire household savings. This is leading to increased awareness and penetration of health insurance, but not many Indians can afford it. Most need their employers to sponsor insurance,” the company said.
According to Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global, Plum is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for employee and staff health covers. “As India’s healthcare insurance industry rapidly expands and transforms, Plum is well-positioned to make comprehensive health insurance accessible to millions of Indians.”
