Indians spend over Rs 2 lakh crore a year on healthcare services, paying from their own pockets because they either don’t have health insurance or the insurance they do have is inadequate. A majority of the pie of such bills comes from savings or borrowings, carrying a financial or emotional cost. These expenses range from emergency healthcare needs to non-emergency medical bills, i.e., medicines, dental, eye, and maternity care, and more.
QubeHealth, a healthtech startup, claims that it is bridging the gap between healthcare payments and health insurance coverage. Below is an edited excerpt from our conversation with the co-founders of QubeHealth.
QubeHealth’s target audience and services
Qube provides a healthcare credit line ("QubeHealth-Credit") of up to Rs 10 lakh to employees and their families to access and pay for any health or medical expense not covered by their health insurance. Employees pay no interest and no fees, paying back at their convenience in a month or a year for amounts they use from their credit line.
QubeHealth has aggregated healthcare providers, financing companies, the payments ecosystem, and Indian corporates to empower employed Indians to easily borrow and quickly pay for any health or medical expense. They can simply use the Qube App to scan and pay, load money to their QubeHealth Prepaid Card (powered by Yes Bank and RuPay), or choose to "Pay through Qube" on POS terminals at a wide range of health and medical merchants across the country.
A brief introduction to the founding team
Chris George, Co-founder and CEO, while sharing his journey with BW Businessworld, said that his father is a cancer survivor, and this became the genesis of QubeHealth. Prior to founding QubeHealth, George founded ‘EasyBuyMusic.com’, a tech-enabled marketing services company that grew to over 400 people with offices across three continents.
Another co-founder, Gagan Kapur, had been part of a third-party administrator (TPA) insurance company, Medicare. However, it is now sold to Medi-Assist. Interestingly, Gagan’s father-in-law was the founder of Medicare. Prior to the inception of QubeHealth, Gagan was country head at Argonaut Private Equity. Moreover he had a stint with EY as well.
How is QubeHealth helping individuals leverage its platform to achieve their healthcare requirements without increasing OoPE?
The company claims that it has signed over 118,000 employees of corporations that have paid a subscription fee for each of them—free to the employees. These employees (the "Users") are borrowing every month from their Qube App, from their assigned credit limits, to pay for urgent and non-urgent medical expenses, as well as bills that will be reimbursed through their insurance (bridging non-cashless healthcare expenditure).
Borrowing for healthcare is extremely common, especially in India. Through a credit card, personal loan, or from friends and family. This comes at a cost, as does spending from personal savings. By providing no-cost capital, Qube gives the Indian family more control over their healthcare options. It helps them opt for healthcare sooner rather than later and make choices that are not limited by expensive money.
What are the differentiating factors of QubeHealth, or how is QubeHealth different from the existing players in the industry?
QubeHealth claims that it does not charge its users any interest on the money it borrows from the QubeHealth-Credit platform to pay for any health or medical bill. It gives a pre-assigned limit to each user in advance, allowing them to draw down and spend when they need it, wherever they need to, as opposed to being limited to only those healthcare providers that provide a financing option.
What is the funding status and monetization model?
QubeHealth is a pre-series A funded company, with investments from marquee Indian and international investors—Inflection Point Ventures, Keiretsu, Axiomatic Ventures, New Horizon Ventures, Mohit Burman (Dabur), and more. Qube makes money from the subscription fee that corporations pay to provide the QubeHealth-Credit service to their employees. It also makes money from the mass aggregation of its users buying power.
What is the vision of QubeHealth for the next 3–5 years?
Over the next 3 years, QubeHealth expects to ‘activate’ USD 2 billion in healthcare credit for over a million Indian households. This means that a million households, accessed through the earning member of that household, will have a medical line of credit available to them at no cost, which they can draw down as needed to pay for everyday medical expenses as well as emergencies. They could also use this to pay for health insurance premiums.
What is the market size and opportunity?
Out-of-pocket expenditure (OoPE) on healthcare in India ranges anywhere from 50 per cent to 75 per cent, that is, upwards of USD 50 billion. Every year, Indians routinely borrow money—from their credit cards, usurious lenders, or their own savings—to pay for healthcare. This is the size of the market and the opportunity for the startup.