Happy To Give Up Margins For Building Consumer Trust: Yashish Dahiya

For Policybazaar Co-Founder and Group CEO Yashish Dahiya, building consumer confidence is of utmost priority over making profits, even in the post-Covid world when most businesses have been hit. He believes consumer trust building is core to the business operations from a long-term perspective, even if it means giving up on profit margins.

“From a metrics perspective, I will look at margins or Net Present Value, but am very happy to give up on those for long-term consumer strength building. What I mean by consumer strength building is, exclusive products and processes, getting smarter in terms of holding on to our consumers for the future,” Dahiya said at a webinar organized by The Common Room recently.

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The Common Room is a non-profit organization that brings together divergent ideas, influences, people and energies under one roof.

In a response to a question on key business metrics, he said, as a founder one can’t just be driven by a certain metric for business. He said, currently he is focussing on optimizing, given the uncertainties Covid-19 has thrown up. “You have to know why you are doing something, be crystal clear about it, be very articulate to everybody and get their agreement on it.”

He added, “We have 17 business units and there are different metrics for different businesses. You run some businesses because you want to prove that you want to become a player in the market and want to stay relevant. You don’t make losses on them but they are not really margin drivers.”

Policybazaar along with leading insurers, has come together to issue life and health insurance policies by doing your medicals over the phone. Medical check-ups are available to prospective customers via a phone call, also known as tele-medical. 

Tele-medicals cuts down the risk of a physical meeting between customers and doctors and lets insurers carry on with underwriting over the phone. This is being done especially in the wake of the pandemic. The move led to significant uptake in insurance policies and conversion rates increased by 35% in the last month. Turnaround time for issuance of term insurance policies has reduced from 7 days to 4-5 days.

Similarly, Policybazaar also partnered with Bharti Axa last month to offer a ‘pay as you drive’ product on the platform. These are usage-based motor insurance policies for private car owners.

So, the company has made the entire policy issuance process digital, such that there's no room for a physical engagement. Thus, easing the services for the consumers.

(Article edited by: Sunny Lamba)

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