PolicyBazaar, an online insurance aggregator, introduced its new healthcare business DocPrime, a few months back. It is now looking to leverage the capabilities of its newest investor Softbank‘s portfolio company Ping An insurance group, that owns and operates Ping An Good Doctor, to strengthen its healthcare business.
PolicyBazaar had raised over $200 million in series F funding led by Softbank Vision Fund, to enter the elite Unicorn club. Now the insurance aggregator is looking to work with Ping An Good Doctor, world’s largest healthcare portal.
DocPrime is still in beta stage and is expected to be officially launched this month.
“During our conversations, Soft-Bank asked us to look at Ping An, and see whether the model could be replicated…These conversations took place in 2018 itself… We have had conversations with Ping An. We have been to China and looked at ways for us to work together,” Yashish Dahiya, group chief executive ETechAces, the parent of PolicyBazaar.
China-based Ping An Good Doctor was founded in 2014 by Wang Tao. It is an Online-to-Offline healthcare platform that helps to connect patients with doctors. The platform claims to have over 190 million registered users and more than 30 million active users.
It provides healthcare and business insurance management services like expense control service, actuarial service, healthcare insurance service account, medical resources management, and health profile application.
PolicyBazaar’s DocPrime aims to convert consumers out of pocket healthcare spending to insurances. It provides a monthly subscription-based service to provide complete outpatient department (OPD) expenses incurred by patients.
So far, DocPrime claims to have 14,000 doctors, along with an estimated 10,000 labs and clinics on its network. Some of the notable labs in its network include Dr Lal Pathlabs, SRL, among others.
Indian healthcare market is estimated to touch $280 billion by 2020, from the current $100 billion, making it one of the biggest industry in the country. With a majority of the Indian’s using their personal incomes and savings to meet the outpatient expenses, making those expenses a burden as the outpatient expenses keep rising. There is a huge potential in the healthcare insurance market, as the healthcare industry grows.