Month: August 2021

Turtlemint has been awarded the  “Soonicorn Club Awards 2021” by Tracxn and it has joined the esteemed Soonicorn Club of India.

Tracxn is one of the world’s largest platforms for tracking startups and private companies across the globe. Tracxn platform is used by various Governments, Accelerators & Incubators, and Universities for tracking innovative companies and sectors.

The Soonicorn award series recognises the top companies which are Unicorns or have the potential to become Unicorns. Turtlemint has been showcased as a Soonicorn and is amongst the leading Fintech startups of India.

The Tracxn Soonicorn Awards is an initiative by Tracxn to publicly recognise the best of the companies across geographies and sectors. Apart from the well known Unicorns, they also identify companies which can soon be Unicorns (the Soonicorns) as well as the companies that have the potential to become Unicorns in the longer run (the Minicorns). The ratings are based on a detailed analysis by the internal sector specialist teams coupled with a combination of multiple publicly available signals such as market size, investment by marquee investors, execution excellence and future growth prospects.

Winning this award is a great matter of pride for Turtlemint. The award is a testimonial of the hardwork and commitment of the Turtlemint’s team, the faith and support of the partners, customers and investors.

Insurance is a very important and an equally personal subject. Typically, an insurance advisor would visit you at home and over a cup of tea and some Marie biscuits have a conversation with you about your need for insurance. You would discuss your family, your plans for your children, and even your concerns regarding who will take care of them if something untoward was to happen to you. Your insurance advisor will also begin to play the role of a trusted friend, one on whom you can rely for the right insurance advice. Thus, when it comes to finally buying the insurance policy most Indians would inevitably purchase it from their trusted insurance advisor. As a matter of fact, in India, almost 90% of the insurance policies are bought from advisors. This means that if Turtlemint wished to meet its goal of improving insurance penetration in the country, then it had to empower the insurance advisor. 

Typically, an insurance advisor faces several challenges which could range from lead generation and networking to educating the client and ensuring seamless on-boarding. At the same time, insurance advisors also need to constantly upskill themselves and be aware of the latest product and services in the insurance space in order to guide their clients more effectively. All these things can be extremely challenging, especially if you consider that each insurance advisor is basically a micro-entrepreneur who is running his / her own business. Turtlemint reviewed and understood the prevailing challenges and then envisaged easy and accessible solutions for insurance advisors by leveraging technology.

Through Turtlemint’s intuitive mobile app, insurance advisors have access to a wide variety of insurance products, customized recommendation tools, and a wide range of courses on financial products. In addition, the platform allows for instant online issuance, across 50+ insurers while reducing the average turnaround time to less than 10 minutes vs. the traditional market standards of 48 hours. Some of the innovative products that were launched included:

• Providing insurance advisors with digital tools that can enable them to sell multiple insurance products of multiple insurance companies through one single and multilingual mobile application. 
• Creating a seamless on-boarding process for insurance advisors along with online training, examination, and certification. 
• Building a comprehensive online skill development program for insurance advisors. The program offers more than 70+ courses ranging from insurance advisor certification to personality development courses, sales skills, podcasts, etc.
• Enabling the advisor to grow her business by providing access to a complete suite of products and information required to become a great insurance advisor. The company’s app also provides relevant analytics and information on lead management and shares marketing tools like brochures, posters, own profile, etc.

While these initiatives are the right step towards improving insurance penetration in the country, they also enabled people to embark on their own entrepreneurial journey, creating new advisors in geographies where no competitor had presence. Turtlemint recognised early on that the insurance advisor is the most important cog in the insurance wheel and if India is to move forward towards its dream of achieving universal insurance, then it is the advisors that need to be empowered with the right set of technology tools.

When you say the word ‘insurance’ there are a couple of things that will come to mind. The first is inevitably protection. After all, insurance is what can get you through tough times. The other word that comes to mind is ‘challenging’. Most people know very little about the different types of insurance products that are available and therefore, find it challenging to buy insurance. In India, these issues have acted as a strong impediment to insurance penetration. As a matter of fact, insurance penetration in India is only around 3.7%. This is where we aimed to orchestrate change.

Turtlemint was established with an aim to improve insurance penetration in India and create a seamless insurance ecosystem where sizable value can accrue to every stakeholder. An assessment of key challenges revealed that lack of education on insurance products and access are two of the major factors acting as a deterrent to insurance penetration. Another factor which came up was the importance of insurance advisors in the ecosystem. When it comes to buying insurance, it is not just a commercial transaction. People like to engage with their advisors, discuss their requirements, and then purchase insurance. The insurance advisor brings with him/her an element of trust and dependability. Recognising this, Turtlemint focused on empowering the insurance advisor with the right set of digital tools and access to educational and upskilling resources.

The company pioneered the PoSP landscape and elevated the entire insurance ecosystem by empowering the most essential player, i.e., the insurance advisor. In an industry-first initiative, it focused on leveraging digital technology that can educate advisors, help them upskill, make client advisory and on-boarding process seamless, and help them give their clients the best advice. This offline-online model had widespread ramifications. Firstly, it helped improve insurance penetration by making insurance more accessible and easier to understand. And, secondly, it also stoked the entrepreneurial attitude of people and created new advisors in geographies where no competitor had presence.

To put that in numbers, Turtlemint has created more than 1,20,000 micro entrepreneurs with penetration in 14,000+ pin codes out of 19,000 pin codes in India and more than 1.5 million customers. It has also on boarded 50+ insurers. Additionally, over 10 Lakh+ people have installed the mobile application of Turtlemint while the company has served over 1.5 Lakh active insurance advisors and sold over 35 lakh policies. The company has 50+ branches across the country that serve advisors and in fact, there are barely any pincodes in the country where you will not find a Turtlemint Advisor.

While Turtlemint is well on its march towards achieving its goals, it is important to highlight that such success stems from an unflinching belief and focus on one’s goals and destination. Turtlemint has remained steadfast on its journey towards improving insurance penetration in India through technology tools that can empower advisors and make it easy for consumers to purchase an insurance policy.

Over the last 5 years, Turtlemint has had an interesting journey as it navigated changes in the regulatory landscape and the unprecedented impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. The company set out with a goal to promote insurance penetration in the country and has taken targeted steps to achieve this goal. Today, it is India’s largest Insurtech platform and has been awarded the “Insurtech Start-Up of the Year Award” in the “11th Annual Entrepreneur Awards 2021” by Entrepreneur India. This award is a testament to the company’s long-term focus on improving insurance penetration in the country by empowering insurance advisors with the relevant digital and upskilling tools. The company’s success rests upon its four pillars – People, Partner, Platform, and Product.

1. People: In the five years since its inception, Turtlemint has launched multiple tools and initiatives that have made it easier for insurance advisors to understand insurance products, access the relevant information, educate the client about various solutions, and seamlessly onboard the client. This has required the efforts of multiple stakeholders (our internal stakeholders & external stakeholders) who have contributed their time, skills, and money to create a tangible offering that can bring about real change in the insurance ecosystem. Our internal stake holders (insurance advisors and our employees) along with our external stakeholders (our investors) have played a catalytic role in Turtlemint’s journey so far.
2. Partner: As Michael Jordan, the famous basketball player of all time said, “Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” The story of success is not written by one person or company, rather it is the cumulative effort of lots of people who partner in this journey. For Turtlemint, those partners have been the insurance advisors who trusted the company and took a leap of faith by seeking to leverage its offerings. It is due to these partners that Turtlemint has created and become the largest network of PoSP’s in India with 1,50,000 Insurance advisors with penetration in 14,000+ pin codes out of 19,000 pin codes in India and more than 1.5 million customers. It has also onboarded 50+ insurers.
3. Platform: Through its user friendly mobile app, Turtlemint provides advisors access to a wide variety of insurance products, customized recommendation tools, and a wide range of courses on financial products. In addition, the platform allows for instant online issuance, across 50+ insurers while reducing the average turnaround time to less than 10 minutes vs. the traditional market standards of 48 hours. The company also provides regular training and upskilling sessions to empower advisors and enable them to orchestrate the change that they desire.
4. Product: The type of insurance a customer buys is a very personal choice. It is influenced by their circumstances and requirements. However, due to lack of information, clients often make suboptimal decisions or rely on insurance advisors for making the correct choices. Thus, Turtlemint’s mobile app helps advisors access the right information, at the right time, and in a seamless manner. It intelligently recommends plans that meet the unique needs of the client and allows the easy comparison of quotes and prices, thereby enabling the client to make the right choices.

These four pillars have supported Turtlemint’s journey so far and will continue to act as the guiding principles as the company forges ahead towards its goal of empowering insurance advisors and enabling universal insurance.

Hey All! 

Listen to the Podcast conversation between Dhirendra Mahyavanshi & Michael Waitze from Asia Insuretech podcast about about the ever-evolving dynamic Insurtech landscape in India.

Dhirendra speaks about his 19 years journey from his early days in the insurance industry to creating the largest Insurtech startup in India with a PoSP network of more than 1,20,000 insurance advisors in India. 

Click Here to Listen to the Podcast
Some Important Excerpts of the conversation:

• A large part of the population has been introduced to insurance very, very recently, because maybe COVID has accelerated that a little.
• We are solving for increasing penetration, getting new customers, who were probably in the rural markets, with less access to insurance kind of products, they become part of the insurance world and they get insured.
• One big change that I see is that this industry is able to attract talent now. Earlier, it would be very hard to get top notch students from the best colleges to come and join the insurance industry. Now we’ve got the best engineering talent that wants to work in the insuretech space.
• We firmly believe that insurance is a business of relationship, it’s a business of trust. The product is complex. Consumers may understand parts of it, but can’t make a decision for themselves without expert advice. And, and that’s why also the need for buying insurance is not something that is inherent in a person, it has to be told to him and then he makes a then he comes to know that he needs to be insured, especially in markets like India. 
• We have a content strategy that is focused on creating awareness around insurance. And we disseminate this content, which is what we call micro bite sized content, which is both video and sort of text and material based. We disseminate through our network of advisers.
• So we have about 500,000 financial advisors, who use our platform. More than a million downloads, but 500,000 actively distributing content within their community and getting customers to know about insurance.
• We have about 80% of our business that happens in cities beyond the top 10 and 65% of our business comes from cities beyond top 30.
• What we also did was we created technology that could also be consumed by large companies or small companies alike, who probably did not have access to this kind of a platform. So we’ve created API’s that banks, fintechs, or any other startup with a captive consumer base can use.

You can also share the interesting conversation from your social media handles in your network.