Keeping It Small

Toffee Insurance has made it big by selling insurance for things like bicycles, backpacks and even gym injuries.

- Aprajita Sharma

MOST PEOPLE AVOID buying insurance as they don’t want to deal with the complexities. Even if they do buy, it is largely for saving tax. Rohan Kumar and Nishant Jain, the co-founders of Toffee Insurance, observed the scale of the problem while working on online sales with client Apollo Munich. “We realised that insurance products were not only expensive but also irrelevant for a large number of people. Millennials are not that worried about cancer or heart attack. They would prefer insurance for dengue, malaria, typhoid or even food poisoning,” says Kumar.

Why the name ‘Toffee’? Kumar explains: “Toffee means small; so sachet like insurance products. Sachet products have always worked in India. Besides, it’s a fun, young and happy name that will resonate with even non-English speaking populace.”

Kumar and Jain put together insurance products in healthcare and general insurance and launched Toffee Insurance in 2017. The insurance-tech start-up offers bite-sized covers for loss/damage to bicycles, backpacks, gym injuries, accident during daily commute, salary protection and even dengue and chikungunya. It is registered as an insurance intermediary, which means it creates products for insurers and sells to consumers via distributors.