Aspiring to become the Oscar Health of India, Loop Health raises $12M

Loop Health, a Pune-based company, has set its target on becoming the “Oscar Health of India” by closing the health insurance gap in the country.

The company is the latest startup that successfully managed to bring in funding by raking in $12 million in Series A funding in a round that was co-led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital. The two firms were joined by Khosla Venture’s Vinod Khosla, some angel investors that included the CEO of NoBroker, Amit Kumar Agarwal, Livspace founder and COO Ramakant Sharma, Carbon Health co-founder, Meesho co-founders Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal, CEO Zach Sims, CEO Eren Bali, Codecademy co-founder, Maven Clinic founder, CEO Kate Ryder as well as Tribe Capital and YC Continuity Fund.

Loop Health was a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2020 accelerator program through which it had gotten a $2.3 million seed capital. This new funding brings the company’s total funding to $14 million, as reported by the company’s co-founder and CEO Mayank Kale.

Kale started the company with Amrit Singh, Ryan Singh, and Shami Raj after previously working on building digital health records across the country. Loop Health has an in-house medical team as well as a network of service providers to provide group health insurance plans to all sized companies, which includes virtual primary care.

Loop Health aims to bring an increase in the proportion of citizens who have healthcare insurance in India, which is currently at 15%. In addition, these plans tend to cover medical procedures and hospitalizations only while LoopHealth is able to offer more.

The CEO revealed, “In talking to potential customers, half of them are buying insurance for the first time,” adding, “Now employees are asking for it so that the company is competitive with others providing the benefit, but then COVID made it one of the central benefits to people. The sentiment has flipped now.”

Kale stated that 40% of Loop Health customers gain access to consultation with a Loop Health doctor within three months on the plan. Usually, legacy insurance plans do not provide coverage for a large number of diseases even after four years of purchase.

In the last 12 months, Loop Health has started working with over 50,000 total members at over 150 companies that include rediff.com, Weikfield, Helpshift, Shaadi.com, Knorr-Bremse, Shoptimize, and Moonshine Meadery.

The company is targetting 1 million members in India by the end of next year and 5 million members across Southeast Asia in the next 5 years.

The company has seen growth in revenue and workforce with 50% revenue growth and employee number rising to 80 from 10, including 15 care specialists and operations in Pune, Bengaluru, and Mumbai.

To keep this momentum, the CEO intends on using this new funding to increase the company size further by hiring in sales, product development, engineering, and building healthcare clinics.

Some other startups that address health insurance in India include Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global, and Policybazaar.

Loop Health is considered by Mayank Khanduja, partner at Elevation Capital, as an insurance-providing healthcare company. He added that many policyholders are not even sure which hospital they should be even going to and that insurance can be difficult to understand.

The market is estimated to be valued at $3.5 billion with an annual growth rate of 20% to 25% thus Loop Health has a good chance for expansion.