 At a time when the slowdown has hit businesses across sectors, there is one online insurance marketplace which is keeping its head above water and in style. In our Beating All Outs segment today, we have with us Sarvish Singh, the Chief Executive Officer of PolicyBazaar.com. Hi, Mr. Singh. Hi, how are you? Good. You took over as a CEO in Feb and the crisis began in March. Was it literally a case of trial by fire for you? Yeah, it would seem so, I think, from the outside. But I think there were two sort of big redeeming features. One is that, you know, the organization is, you know, we have an extremely solid team, you know, and of course, Yashish, who was, you know, who's the Group CEO now and the founder, he's very much here. So I think while things are a little bit more difficult when you don't have, you know, physical access, but I would say that there was no fire to begin with. So I think we've been in good shape and like you said, that's what the business has been doing really well, so absolutely no complaints. You've actually managed to bring your sales up in the crisis period. Tell me what kind of change in the consumer behavior with the due witness in the short span and what kind of plans are people buying and what age groups literally? Yeah, so I think, you know, we look at our business in three parts actually. So we have a protection business where essentially people buy health and term insurance, which is to protect yourself against, you know, death, disease and disability. Then we have a savings business where people invest for savings, you know, for their to grow their savings over the 10, 15 year time period. And then we have the mandatory products, which are motor and two wheeler insurance, which you buy because, you know, you are supposed to buy them for using your vehicles. So if you see what's happened in the last two months, if I were to look at it, the protection products have grown quite significantly. And that is because, you know, the concern, you see, insurance is something which very few people wake up in the morning and say that I should buy insurance today. It's a very difficult category from that perspective. But now is a time when everybody, when, you know, they wake up in the morning, they have some concerns about their health, about life, etc. So there is a natural demand for insurance. So I think the protection products have done well. The second thing which has worked very well for us is that, you know, all the physical channels clearly are not possible. So if you're an agent or if you go to a bank branch and buy insurance, that won't work at this moment. So having built a digital stack. So one of the, I think things that Policy Bazaar has done a great job of is not only do we have all plans which you can compare and learn more about, but we can actually issue the policy to you. So I think that differentiation, you are able to come to one side, you know, you are able to speak to a very knowledgeable, informed, you know, advisor who tells you about the policy and then you can get the policy issued from there. So I think that whole full stack experience that we've been able to give has clearly, you know, helped us in the last few months. And I think that's why consumers have preferred to buy from Policy Bazaar and like you said, that's why, you know, business has been pretty good. So would you say as an aggregator, you are better placed in the typical branch, bank branch networks and the agent networks, as far as getting consumers on board and delivering is concerned? So I think, I would say one part is being an aggregator, but I think the more important part is that Policy Bazaar, you know, is a digital distribution channel. So, you know, having built that capability. See, for a lot of people, they are now right now figuring out how to be digital, how to work more, you know, in a sort of contactless manner. But for us, that's the business that we've been building for the last 10, 12 years. So I think in a way, this, this issue that has come up has played into the strengths of Policy Bazaar and, you know, we have not been sitting either. We have been working very hard over the last two months to sharpen this edge, right? So let me give you an example. For instance, today you can buy a health policy without any physical medical on our platform and we work with our insurance partners to make that possible. So we have a telemedical, in some cases, we have a video medical process, you know, in some cases, there's a questionnaire. So what we do is we want to make sure that our insurance partners also are able to judge the risk correctly. So it's not just about satisfying one, you know, side of the platform. So we want to do a good job for consumers, but we also want to do a good job for insurance partners because they see Policy Bazaar not only as a distribution channel, but as a profitable distribution channel. And that's not, you know, that's a position we want to keep. So what we've done is really to balance both sides of the equation and offer an alternative, which didn't exist, let's say I was not used as much a few months ago, make it sort of, you know, much more commonplace. So you would have seen our sort of some of our marketing also around this that you can buy sitting at home and you know, you don't have to go anywhere. And as you can imagine, that's a powerful proposition in these times. I was just going to come to that, you know, insurance sector has been one of the biggest market advertisers during this period, even though, you know, fintech companies have been badly hit. Tell me, how did you join the bandwagon? And what has your focus been as an advertiser right now? Yeah, so one is, you know, historically, Policy Bazaar has been one of the biggest advertisers in the insurance space, right? So that goes, you know, that is pre-COVID and obviously continuing through COVID, you know, immediately once the lockdown was announced, one of the first decisions we took was that we need to be more visible. So we said that, you know, in March, we always are very visible because that is a, you know, a big period for insurance companies and for us. But in April also, we took a call where, you know, traditionally, we may not have been, you know, advertised as much on TV in April, given that it's a lean season. But we said that, look, this year, because of this, you know, our customers, our consumers need to know that we are present, that we can actually service their needs. So we actually advertised more in April than we did even in March. So that just shows you the investment that we made in the, in this, in getting our proposition out there because of this special circumstance. And I think being a sort of young startup, we are able to make these decisions fairly dynamically and, you know, act on them. So I would say rather than us joining the bandwagon, we prefer to see it as sort of leading the bandwagon. And I think a lot of people, when they saw the success that we had due to our marketing, obviously, have also, you know, pushed the envelope on that as well. Could you give a sense of how much the sales have gone up by? So over the last few months, if you were to just look at it, our protection business has gone up by between 40 and 50 percent on a year-on-year basis. And, you know, then our, then other businesses have not grown as much. But overall, also, we continue to grow quite, quite handsomely. And, you know, the industry figures are with you. As you know, the industry has had a fairly difficult time in the last two months. And you're coming back to advertising. You've traditionally been a very TV heavy advertiser, if I'm not wrong. And this has, this is one phase where you've literally seen digital consumption rising. Be it OTT platforms or anything else. Has your strategy changed now? Are you looking at spending more on digital here-on? So actually, to be honest, we are actually 50-50. So if you see almost in any given month, we spend 50 percent on TV and 50 percent on digital. As you would expect, being a digital platform, you know, there's no way that we can't be there. Coming specifically to OTT, I'll be very honest with you. Our experience hasn't been super positive. TV works really well for us. We are, you know, when we increase television, we can see the impact on our business. On the OTT platform, especially relative to TV, it hasn't worked as well. So we don't, you know, find it a huge, so far, we have not found it very logical to be on those platforms. We've experimented with them many times and we will continue to do that, you know, because things change. But if you see our strategy is very babel. On one side, we have very directed search-led advertising. And on the other hand, we have brand advertising on television. And both of these actually have a huge impact and both of these actually work very well for us. So far, yeah. And, you know, you have about, I think, 13,000 call centre employees across. Correct. Yeah, between policy bazaar and press bazaar. That's correct. And how have you managed to move the processes, you know, to individual homes in this period? Yeah, that's actually a very good question. That was a big concern for us because traditionally, in, you know, policy bazaar has thought about having work from home many times. And, you know, somehow, for one reason or another, we were never able to make it successful. And here we were faced with literally one week and we had to move everybody, you know, to work from home. And I think the credit for this entirely goes to our technology, you know, our IT infra and operations team. They really were, you know, in a sort of nothing short of a miracle in one week. We were able to transform all our systems into mobile. We were able to procure hardware for our agents. We were able to, you know, figure out how the process would work in a work from home environment versus, you know, fully 100% work from office. And, you know, the good news is that almost from the next day that we transitioned, we were at higher levels of productivity than we were before. It helped that we were in season, you know, March is a big season for us. So I think our agents also were very keen to continue selling. And I think, you know, obviously in the last two months, since then we've improved our processes, everything very much. So much so to the effect that now I think we will never have 100% work from office. I think we have a new business model practically. And we'll always have probably 25, 30% working from home. And we will also use this as a blueprint to go into other areas of, you know, for instance, in the South, PolicyBizare is not such a strong brand name as it is in the North and the West. And what we now will do is, you know, language is a big part of that. So what we now feel is that instead of setting up, you know, one center in one city and, you know, debating where that city should be investment in that center, et cetera. Now we could perhaps have two, three cities where we'll have very small offices and have, you know, agents working from home. And be able to serve customers in the language that they want. And, you know, there's no reason for them to not be served in their languages. So I think as the dust is settling on this whole thing, I mean, let's see how it goes. Because as you know, it's very hard to make predictions at this point, but one thing is very clear that we are going to take this business model and, you know, grow it. It will also allow us to have a more diverse workforce, you know, especially women, for instance. Many times they can't work, you know, in the structured hours that we want them to after you've had a kid or something like that. Now, you know, we can have the best sales agency. As long as you can sell, it's up to you when you want to work. So I think this is going to be really, you know, a big change for us. And we think it will be very, very positive. So that's a win-win for employees and both the employer that way. Absolutely. We believe that our agents should do well. They should earn, you know, more money. And this will now actually allow us to give them more money because, you know, our fixed costs will be lower. Absolutely. And also tell me what kind of changes or innovations have you brought about on your websites and, you know, how you sell insurance to your consumers? I read something about telemedical insurance. Are there more to this effect? I mean, have you introduced much in this period? Yeah. So I think what we've been trying to do is, you know, we have been, and this again, a consistent journey that we've been on is to keep making the process simpler and easier to use. And also what has happened is over the years, you see, like now, policy bizarre has over 10 million customers who have bought policies from us, let's say in the last three years, if I were to just, you know, look at that period. So now this is a significant base of people, you know, who are very, I would say aspirational, very, as you would expect, you know, a very attractive income segment, et cetera. So now that we have these 10 million people, we can, when you come back to us, we can give you a much smoother experience, right? We know where you live. We sort of know a lot about you. And we can make that process, you know, of onboarding much simpler, right, for you. And the second thing which you refer to is, which is telemedical. This is the part when you buy a health or a term policy, where, you know, the insurance company wants to do a medical checkup on you to make sure that all the things that you've said are appropriate and stuff like that. Now here, again, because the experience that companies have had with us is positive. What I mean by that is that in our platform, we are very transparent in sharing all information with the insurer. So, and mostly in our case, the consumer fills the form, right? Not the agent. So what happens is that the declarations, et cetera, are much more. So companies have had a positive experience. They're willing, hence, to trust our platform more and say that instead of going somewhere to do a physical medical, we will, you know, do a medical on the phone with you. And interestingly, you will find that, you know, data has shown that doing a telemedical is sometimes more accurate than doing a physical medical because, you know, it's your doctor. It's a controlled process. And consumers, for the most part, you know, actually don't lie. Once they understand why you're asking them the questions, they understand. And what we found is that they actually are a lot more truthful than what is commonly believed. Okay, but do you think right now we are at that stage where insurance companies and indicators, like you can literally provide end-to-end delivery of insurance to consumers across the country, even in rural areas? Like, I remember, you know, when we used to take insurance even, like my parents, as far as its health or life, they would still want somebody to physically come and explain to them the different steps and, you know, what are the specifics. Of course, it's different for travel and car. You do it online, it's fine. But do you think now we are in that one stage where you can actually look at an end-to-end delivery happening only on digital? So, yeah, I mean, like you said, you know, even just maybe five years ago or three years ago, even car was not like that, right? Even travel was not like that. A lot of us would buy from physical agents and you would get a, you know, a slip of paper and stuff like that. So I think the journey has moved digital. Of course, car, two-wheeler, travel is there. Health increasingly. So just to give you a sense, over half the health policies that we sell are actually printed off straight away. So, you know, just the process of filling the form, et cetera, you give enough information. And as you know, right, there is whatever you declare on the form, if that's found to be incorrect, then the claim can be denied. So the consumer has every incentive to be truthful and honest. And as I told you, most people actually are truthful and honest because they understand what is, you know, what is the contract. So over 50% of health policies also can be printed off almost immediately. On the life side, there is a slightly different process because they have to, the insurance company has to do their underwriting and, you know, that takes, still takes some time. But yeah, I think we can clearly envisage a process where slowly over time, as we know more and more about the customer, as, you know, more and more touch points are available that we could one day even, you know, print off life policies. So I think we're moving in that direction. And it's something that policy bizarre has always been at the forefront of that innovation and keep driving, you know, understand what the risk is and find the answer to that risk. So that as I told you, we want to make sure that we are good business for the insurance company and for the consumer. It's not a, you know, either or kind of construct. Absolutely. And another thing, another problem with the insurance companies is, you know, they always complain about the low penetration across the country. Now, do you think COVID-19 has brought about this new sense of urgency and awareness about the importance of insurance? And that will be something that will be here to stay and not just a very periodic thing. So again, you know, what has been happening is that, obviously this is actually a big trend that has happened in India that over the last 10 years, the importance of health insurance, importance of term insurance has been growing every year. And events like this, as I told you, nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to buy insurance. So I think this, these events remind us. And, you know, sometimes it's some event which happens around us which sort of jogs us and makes us buy insurance. And sometimes it's these kind of events which sort of remind you of the filiability of life and why, you know, you need to have protection. So I think I agree with you. This should be a step change in the penetration and people should, you know, buy more of insurance. I will tell you one thing that there is a concern also. So it's, you know, while, I mean, I don't want to make it sound like, you know, this is, this pandemic is just all good for us. We, the challenge for us and for everybody is that consumers right now are worried about the incomes. So, so there is a balance between saying that, you know, I know that I should buy insurance, but I'm also concerned about how much income I'll have. So whether I'll buy insurance or not right away is, you know, remains a challenge. So, so I think it's a balance of many, many factors. But, but like you said, I think over time, this probably we look back and say that, you know, insurance penetration grew because of this, this event. Having said that, I hope let's post COVID insurance managers to become a full product and not a push product, which it is right now. Thank you so much for talking to us, Mrs Singh. Lovely having you on meeting all of us. All right. Thank you.