Policybazaar.com to foray into healthcare, tech

Policybazaar.com, India's largest insurance website and comparison portal, is planning to foray into the healthcare technology and services space.

The new platform will provide consumers with easy, online and free access to PolicyBazaar's empanelled top-notch doctors and medical consultants.

To begin with, the company intends to partner with 100 hospitals and 20,000 doctors, diagnostic centres, and clinics by the end of March 2019.

The healthcare vertical also plans to offer a huge array of healthcare services, which includes in-hospital concierge services for its health insurance customers.

By doing this, Policybazaar.com wants to be with its customers at the moment of truth, which is at the time of claims.

"Our foray into the healthcare services space is in sync with the vision of expanding the social security net of India. With this venture, we seek to fulfill the need of providing quality and affordable healthcare of the burgeoning population at large by connecting the consumers with our in-house medical practitioners. The new portal will facilitate the creation of an inclusive healthcare system, which will eventually offer customised options for in-patient department insurance based on detailed analysis undertaken after studying consumer healthcare habits and patient's interactions with the doctors," said Yashish Dahiya, co-founder and CEO, Policybazaar.com.

In the long run, PolicyBazaar.com wants to offer its customers a better and personalised claim and in-hospital experience.

Policybazaar is also going to work with insurers to create a new category of health insurance for Out-patient expenses (OPD) and provide free online medical consultation to consumers over phone and chat.

Policybazaar.com is in discussions with insurance companies to offer a first of its kind OPD insurance product.

The company aims to offer 5 million OPD consultations by next FY.