For a candid discussion on the sidelines of insurance and technology, Rajeev Ranjan, Editor, Digital Terminal spoke to Bragadish Sureshkumar, Chief Technology Officer at Zopper. By moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach, Zopper has partnered with major brands like Amazon, Ola, Titan, and Croma to integrate tailored insurance solutions seamlessly into their ecosystems. Bragadish discusses the challenges and successes of these partnerships, the future of AI in the insurance industry, and the strategic initiatives driving Zopper’s ambitious growth plans. From leveraging AI and ML to ensuring innovation through Zopper Academy, Bragadish outlines a vision for a digitally advanced and customer-centric insurance landscape in India.
Rajeev: How has Zopper leveraged big data and analytics to disrupt the traditional one-size-fits-all insurance approach?
Bragadish: The thumb rule for Zopper is that we discuss the problem statements with our partners and work backward to device a strategic plan and ensure we provide tailor made solutions. We digitize their journey be it - offline or online by adopting a simple, effective SaaS based module by using various machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques. We have successfully implemented these modules in areas like insurance product recommendations based on financial need assessments or suitability, prefilling insurance forms using OCR for easing customer journeys, conversational Chatbots bringing efficiency in Customer Service, Big Data analytics to gain a better understanding of our customers. Agents and employees are coming up to speed to ensure the end-customer receives seamless services and experiences. We have ensured that we are upto speed and deliver the best of class services to customers.
Rajeev: Zopper has partnered with brands like Amazon, Ola, Titan, and Croma for embedded insurance and sachet-sized product distribution. What have been some of the key challenges and successes in these partnerships?
Bragadish: There are plenty of use cases where consumers increasingly expect their insurance experience to be tightly knit and well-integrated, if not fully embedded into their lifestyle choices. We leveraged this idea of embedding insurance and in this context Zopper took notable strides across multiple formats of insurance distribution such as Phygital, Bancassurance and Embedded Insurance to name a few. Having worked with more than 300 partners and clients, we had multiple challenges to cater to, but we were able to design solutions successfully to cater to each of their problems.
One of India’s leading NBFCs witnessed approximately 56% growth just by using Zopper’s Unified Digital Platform which was specially designed for the brand by enabling both real and virtual Relationship Managers and Branches through a single digital platform for supported sales, Zopper assisted with end-to-end client lifecycle management. A renowned bank achieved 2.5X Growth in Gross Premium in the last three years because of Zopper’s solutions.
Rajeev: What future advancements in AI do you foresee in years to come and how Zopper is ready to develop these solutions?
Bragadish: In my opinion, we are still in the early stages of this digitalization cycle and there are compelling reasons to expect that progress towards greater digitalization is well underway. To cite a best example, the usage of AI and ML in our existing modules will surely pave the way for bettering our customer experience. Our strategy has and will always been to foster a culture of innovation and develop new products and services that meet the evolving market conditions. We have conducted many experiments last year and have identified products in a few business verticals which yielded great results for us. We will be focussing on consolidating and maturing those products in the coming years.
Rajeev: What qualities and skills does Zopper prioritize when building its tech team? How do you ensure that the team remains innovative and forward-thinking?
Bragadish: Technology serves people and sector like BFSI, is a highly regulated industry and with AI implemented, the role of technology is all set to revolutionise. AI and ML are helping insurance providers to operationalise all of this data, bringing it in at the right time to support quotes, price a risk, expedite a claim, flag possible fraud or understand a cross-sell opportunity. To upskill our employees and cater to the ever evolving customer needs, we have also recently launched Zopper Academy with the goal to provide more such learning opportunities aligning with business and career development goals.
The academy is open for all employees across the technology team and the employee can also apply for a course every quarter. The nomination is fairly simple and easy to apply, as the employees are simply to identify the relevant course basis their job requirement, which gets approved by the respective engineer managers. Our employees are core pillars of the workplace and we believe that enhancing their skills will only help us climb up the success ladder and in return help us provide better customer experiences.
Rajeev: Zopper plans to on-board over 500 employees in the next two years and aims to achieve a revenue target of INR 1000 Cr+ this year and USD 1 billion by 2027. What strategies are in place to support this rapid growth, and how will technology play a role in achieving these ambitious goals?
Bragadish: We are currently on a multi-year digital journey, and our digital strategy cuts across our businesses. We believe that to create a digital enterprise, the most pertinent aspect is to build a top-notch digital culture that helps remain competitive and leverage growing trends to stay ahead of the curve. Our strategy has always been to foster a culture of innovation and develop new products and services that meet the evolving market conditions.
We have conducted many experiments last year and have identified products in a few business verticals which yielded great results for us. We will be focussing on consolidating and maturing those products in the coming years. We have a great set of customers with whom we are working with in evolving these products and among many other things, they demand for quicker and faster implementations of our solution.
I foresee technology partnerships with established insurers as the next step in evolution to accelerate implementations thereby meeting industry expectations and in turn open up channels for wider market reach for them. There is a huge scope for us to work with our partners and for customers for catering to their demands and provide the best-in-class solutions. By the next two years, we do foresee some exciting and transformative times. We aim to continue the momentum of being India’s number one insurance category creator, working across industries and cities to deliver any type of protection product to any customer.
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