Insurance for millennials

Getting insurance is not as easy as walking into a store and buying a pair of shoes or ordering food online. In other words, it is not millennial-friendly. But Gurugram-based Toffee wants to change that.

Founded by former insurance executives Rohan Kumar and Nishant Jain, Toffee offers ‘micro insurance’—smaller insurance packages called ‘toffees’, such as 14-day globetrotter toffee, 15-day backpacker’s toffee for domestic travel, or a one-year anti-dengue toffee. The insurance premium for these packages are between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000. A customer could avail one on the company website, or could even expect to bump into a Toffee executive at a cafe or a music festival—the startup is targeting popular spots like these, and partnering with adventure tour organisers like Thrillophilia, to sell its insurance.

Toffee CEO Kumar says traditional insurance is designed for an offline channel, and is “very complex”. He says the insurance packages offered in the market have “no contextualisation” for a young audience.

Co-founder Jain says Toffee wants to cover the younger audience for lifestyle-related risks, say a running-related injury. “We accept that millennials are going to take risks. All we are saying is that ‘we’ll cover you for your specific kind of risk’,” says Jain.

Toffee went live on November 29 last year. The startup says it has reduced the average purchase time to as little as 90 seconds.

To be clear, Toffee is not an insurance company, but a licensed insurance corporate agent. In other words, the startup works with established insurance companies such as Apollo Munich, HDFC Ergo, and Future Generali to repackage their products. Toffee charges commission of between 18% and 25% from these companies for selling their products.

The startup traces its origin to research Kumar and Jain were conducting for Apollo Munich and other global insurance companies to improve online conversions. The two found out that youngsters were not buying insurance. They realised they could solve the problem if they could offer small lifestyle-related insurance coverage and explain its benefits in jargon-free language.

So don’t be surprised to spot an insurance agent at your cycling club next Sunday.