The investment will primarily be used for product development specifically in the OPD space and expanding the core team
Kenko Health, a Health Insur-Tech company has raised $ 1.7 million as a part of their pre-series A round with BEENEXT and Orios as co-lead investors. This round also saw participation from Accelerator VC 9Unicorns and Waveform Ventures. The investment will primarily be used for product development specifically in the OPD space and expanding the core team.
In the Indian health insurance space, most companies only focus on covering hospitalisation costs. On average, close to 75% of an individual’s lifetime healthcare expenses are incurred outside of a hospital. This includes doctor fees, medicine expenses, diagnostic tests and even non-prescription products and services such as infant care, vision care, dental care, hair and skincare, and so on. In the current healthcare system, most of these are loosely termed as OPD (Outpatient Department Costs) and are usually not covered by any form of Insurance. Kenko believes that the key to protecting people’s health and wealth lies in covering all healthcare expenses: large and small, medical and OTC (over-the-counter), preventive and curative.
Rahul Maheshwari, Investment team at BEENEXT said, “Their unique subscription model and focus on overall healthcare including OPD makes Kenko a disruptor in this space. We are excited to be partnering with Kenko Health in their pursuit to make health insurance affordable and accessible to the larger Indian population.”
Anup Jain, Orios Venture Partners said “Kenko is all set to provide a peace-of-mind plan for the first time insurance buyer in India who has been unable to access the benefits of insurance due to high premiums, lack of understanding and absence of a full-stack digital experience. We are excited to partner with BEENEXT on leading this investment”
Dr Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder and Managing Director, 9Unicorns, said, “The health insurance sector in India hasn’t received much traction in recent years. Most of the insurance companies operate with traditional health plans and primarily focus on filling their pockets, without looking at customer satisfaction in general. What Kenko is trying to do is truly out of the ordinary. Not only has the company been vocal about this problem but is also trying to create a better business model to provide suitable medical coverage options to their customers while scaling the path of success. We wish them continued success in their future endeavours”.
Arun Tadanki, Lead Investor, Waveform Ventures says, “We are impressed by the founders’ deep domain knowledge and their commitment to simplify healthcare coverage and make it more accessible. Kenko is truly reimagining, with their consumer-friendly offering ”
Aniruddha Sen, Co-Founder, Kenko Health said, “At Kenko, customer experience is of primary importance and, toward that end, we set out to create a unique system of benefit payout where the customer receives the cost of treatment directly into their bank account before the treatment starts. With partners such as BEENEXT and Orios backing us, we are confident of giving India’s health insur-tech a much-needed digital makeover. We are aiming to add 20K users to our programme this year and another 100K next year.”
The pandemic has definitely created a surge in demand for health insurance. Reports as of June’21 state that stand-alone health insurance grew at 55% over the same period in the previous year. Kenko is aiming to tap into this growing market and build a robust healthcare system in the country.