Full Transcript

Dhruv Sharma: Thank you for watching. Happy Friday there listeners, Utsav and I are here in our AI native tshirts. Today we are actually pretty much wearing the same thing. And we have three guests who are going to be joining us right after we cover the news. Utsav, what's been cooking?

Utsav Somani: All right, so we're going to talk about the US stock market in different shapes and forms today. Let's talk about how Indians will start investing more in the US stocks. So NSC International Exchange launched global access where people can use their 250k USD annual limit under LRS to start investing and sending money. And Sirota has posted about this because they will enable this. IFSCA, which is the gift city regulator, has launched this license called Gateway Access Provider. So now you can literally just wire to them and then actually buy these stocks. But what's truly interesting is that in US most of the exchanges are actually not the ones which are doing the trades. Typically, suppose you're using Robinhood, you route your order through a market maker like Citadel. And this all came to light when you had GameStop, that shorting drama which happened during the COVID times. So, I mean, orders were not hitting the exchanges. People didn't have stock to actually close the trades or deliver or make good for the trades that they did. But now this has a slightly better protection mechanism that you're actually buying the security that you're investing in. So super interesting. I think it's going to open up a new revenue stream for many of the Indian brokers. Because typically you had to wire money to, I don't know, InBunny enabled this, Vested enabled this, Interactive Brokers enabled this. So fairly exciting development because I think people want to participate in the AI wave. And I think companies like DSMC or Nvidia and many of these global giants will now become more accessible. Anything to add? Do you invest in it?

Dhruv Sharma: I do, I do. IND in fact was one of the first few that made this possible. They used to have a 2 plus 1 account. I think they'd give you a bank account with SBM. And then I'm not sure if you use, I think you also use your LRS limit over there. So I think if I understood what you said correctly, sitting here in India, we can use a quota which is called the LRS quota. We can use that to turn rupees into dollars right here and use Indian market infrastructure to become shareholders in Apple, Tesla, Nvidia, whatever else we like.

Utsav Somani: Yeah. And Gift City has become fairly interesting because they're keeping all this money on shore, like technically. I mean, of course, it's regulated as an overseas and a separate regulator from SEBI, but I think all of this stays still on shore.

Dhruv Sharma: They're keeping money on shore and then Indian market intermediaries also generate revenue, which is, I mean, there's nothing not to like about it. So, yeah, this is interesting.

Utsav Somani: Tell me any stocks that you bought in the US market. None of this is financial advice.

Dhruv Sharma: None of this is financial advice. I think some of the ones that you mentioned, right? It's like you want to invest in companies whose products you really like or whose founders you really look up to or if it's an ex-employer or something like that and you get to do that. So, yeah, I frankly never like go back and check how those stocks are performing. I think the buy and hold positions for me and if anything, sometimes you buy more.

Utsav Somani: All right. Wishing you some multi-baggers. One funny thing that we saw on Twitter, Chamath is handing out school scholarships now to people who are calling him out for the capital losses that he's generated. I mean, this, I mean, not this article, but I think Chamath's been, I mean, in the news because of the SPAC losses where he personally made 500 million in gains. Investors lost over 12 billion. The Virgin Galactic, Clover Health and SoFi is probably SoFi is the only winner amongst these SPAC era of his. So, yeah, he said that you generated capital losses. Did you use those yet? So, basically, a direct dig at anyone who's calling him out for generating these capital losses. People should fairly easily remember that Kathy Wood also posted something where she said that it's an underappreciated asset where you can offset future capital gains. I mean, beats me.

Dhruv Sharma: It's like heads you win, tails you get capital losses. But what's the bit about scholarships?

Utsav Somani: So somebody who called him out on Twitter where he said that, oh, they had a exchange briefly on Twitter where he said that, hey, why are you not paying back my losses or something? And he said earlier that if you post a screenshot of your capital losses, I'll reimburse you. But somebody is finally collecting that from him. So, yeah, I mean, if you've made losses in Chamath's SPACs, I think good to tag him on Twitter. Yeah. And you shared a very interesting article, situational awareness. Do you want to highlight some key points from that?

Dhruv Sharma: Sure, I could. But so there's I mean, the Internet rediscovered someone who's now a 25 year old, but who at the age of 21 used to work at OpenAI. I think spent about a year there, was I think on the alignment team, then was asked to let go. He wrote a series of essays eventually. In fact, you can just go on situational awareness.ai and all the essays are there and you can just download a PDF of all of them. It's 165 page book, mini book. And then he took that book to a bunch of people, used that to raise, I think, like a 500 million dollar fund. 225. 225, yes. And he's got unrealized gains of some, I think, 10, 20x already.

Utsav Somani: The fund is already at 5.5 billion now.

Dhruv Sharma: Oh, wow. And I would imagine much of that is concentrated in one big bet. But what are his what kind of bets is he making? I mean, mostly I think so.

Utsav Somani: He's referring to this article and people say that his book is inspired by this Daniel Gross article, which lays out in 2024 in very clear terms on his blog on what will be the way to position to benefit from this world of AI. So data centers. I mean, the world of AI, if you zoom out, I think it's compute plus energy getting converted into tokens and intelligence. So he's positioning himself on anything that can benefit from that. I think his largest position is this company called Bloom Energy, which makes fuel cell power. And Corvi, which is also up like 672 percent, Sandisk, which all of us know as the memory chip provider, up 800 percent. And I mean, all of these are pretty crazy bets, but one piece from that thing, which mentions that Indian IT industry exports almost 250 billion dollars annually, is basically an open AI token in the future where you can literally just do most of the stuff done by the Indian IT industry. It's a very simple abstraction. I don't know if it's fully true, but in the future, he's I mean, he has also shorted Infosys in a big way. So I think very interesting to see how he's playing this out. But describe to me the situational awareness thing. I think it's a fascinating word. And if you've gone through some of that.

Dhruv Sharma: The website or like just what the term is? Yeah, the website. You know, the one thing that from the website really stood out outside of all of these AI trades is he actually even has a perspective on why people shouldn't be spending too much time watching Netflix. Oh, wow. Share it with you. Yes. No, no, it's just about, you know, the many things you shouldn't be wasting time doing, including computer gaming and Netflix.

Utsav Somani: All right. Should we welcome our first guest now?

Dhruv Sharma: We're ready to welcome our first guest.

Utsav Somani: All right, Abhishek, let's have you on. Good to have you here with us.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Hey, yourself. Thank you so much. Good to see you. Long time.

Utsav Somani: Making the unsexy sexy with Plum. So Dhruv, get us started.

Dhruv Sharma: Yeah, I mean, great to have you with us, Abhishek. You know, to just get us started, why don't you give us a lay of the land in terms of insurance? And, you know, what are the different categories of products? How much have they penetrated? And how have you found Plum's current mission in light of all of that? How many lives have you insured up to this point?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Absolutely. If you think about health insurance, which is what we are working on for the last six years, health insurance typically is distributed in three ways across the world and in India as well. Other people buy on their own if they have enough wealth or they believe in it, or from their organization where they're working along with their family members. Or there is a government system which is funded by our tax money, which is taking care of people. Where we started six years ago was the second, which is working with the corporates and really helping them design the right kind of insurance and health care program. I think it's been an incredible journey for us. We today partner with over 6,000 organizations, over six lakh lives or so that we impact. And we're grateful to those companies who have chosen Plum as their partner.

Utsav Somani: And insurance in India is, sorry, I think penetration rates.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Penetration rates, yeah. So there is this IADA report that gets published every year and it could give us a penetration rate, which is in that 40, 45 percent of the people, of the population, Indian population that is covered. But in a lot of ways, I believe that it overstates the real penetration, because a lot of population today, they have a very minuscule coverage. Think of like a three lakhs or a five lakhs cover. And if you think of the real situations when we really are in a critical care, most of these treatments would be in tens of lakhs, sometimes even going up to the crore, which means when you actually need the insurance for that life saving treatment, you don't have anything with you, right? So in my view, the actual coverage, which is like sufficient coverage, less than 10 percent of the Indian population have a real coverage that will protect them from the situation.

Dhruv Sharma: How do you numerically define that, Abhishek?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Think of, yeah, so think of, if you have one critical treatment or a critical illness, is your insurance enough for you? Now that is subjective. It's very hard to put it down. And that's the reason even the regulators don't put it. But ballpark, I think that number would be in the 10 to 20 lakh cover. If you don't have more than 10 lakh kind of a cover, you probably don't have enough cover.

Utsav Somani: OK. And I mean, at what moment did you realize that Plum or the business that you're building is best positioned to solve this? Because insurance generally has been trust deficit overall, right? And families fighting at the worst time. I mean, everyone is always complaining about their insurers, that the claim process is broken and almost always that they feel that they're shortchanged on the claim process and getting the claim money back. So at what point did you realize what did you want to solve and how to solve it at Plum?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, I think this was a very, it's a combination of top-down and a bottom-up approach. I think being, I think two parts that played here. One is I started my journey as a consultant and I think what I know was, hey, let's do a top-down market analysis of which are large opportunities, but really broken, very fragmented, very low tech. And insurance seems to be that one of those opportunities where while the market was large, still there was a tailwind in terms of the growth and very low NPS, very low, very high fragmentation and a very low trust in that industry. Combine that with a very bottom-up. Before starting Plum, my co-founder Saurabh and I would have met more than hundreds of HRs, founders, employees who were our prospective customers to understand their worldview. And we saw that, yeah, there is, while there is this market opportunity, there is a large set of people who want to spend on it, but they're not just getting the right experience, the right kind of product. So it was a combination of those bottom-up and a top-down approach that led us to building Plum in the first place.

Dhruv Sharma: And I'd love for you to tell us about your licensing journey as well, Abhishek. I believe you guys started out as agents, then became brokers. I'm sure there's something coming up next. Tell us about that.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, I think one of the interesting things is that we are one of the very rare people who decided to build an insurance. If you look at all the insurance companies, especially so in India, that would have started in the last two or three decades. They were started by people who have a lot of experience in insurance and we had never ever worked in insurance. So we were in our discovery path, not just with insurance as a subject matter, but like how the regulations work around it. So we figured out, we went to the regulator, which is IRDA, and we met a senior gentleman there and asked them, Hey, how should we go about it? We literally presented our business plan to this person. And he said, Hey, don't, this broker license, etc. is going to take a lot of time. Hey, this is a simpler license. Just go for a corporate agent license. This will still take you six months, but this is the shortest amount of time. So we spent six months trying to get that license. And then we again went back to IRDA, maybe two years later saying, Hey, now we have a decent sized business. What should we do? And they said, now is a good time for you to get a full blown broker's license. And then we went and took the broker license. And that way, I think the regulator in India, especially specifically when it comes to insurance, is pretty supportive in terms of helping people like us do the right thing.

Utsav Somani: And you're sitting comfortably between the insurer and the employee or the employer of like, say, large. I mean, people where you distribute your services and product to. Right. So what makes you structurally defensible against the insurance companies going direct and going fully digital?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, I think that's a great question. And two, three things. I think one is. If you look at the insurance companies, they're called in an insurance ecosystem, they're called carriers globally. The carriers are traditionally very well equipped to select and price the risk. That is their capability.

Utsav Somani: They're not like finance companies.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: They're more like finance companies, the world's best companies. And someone has told me this long back, the world's best insurance companies. They'll be like few tens of billions of dollars of companies, but they'll operate with a team of 100 people because they're just doing the risk underwriting and risk selection. That is the core of insurance carrier company. The skill set of distribution, the skill set of building experience for the members, for the HRs is a very different thing from being a insurance underwriting company. And I think if you look at a lot of insurance companies across the world and India, you will see that mismatch of skills, which is these companies are really good. And I don't think we can at least not now. We can do a good job of risk selection or pricing. I think that we leave it to our insurance partners. But what we know well is how to build a really consumer grade experience. And that's what we have spent the last two decades between Saurabh and me building those consumer grade experiences. And that's what we are leveraging. And I think that's where our insurance partners also really appreciate that. This is not something that we can ever do. And I would rather build this with Plum.

Dhruv Sharma: A related question. This is Abhishek. You guys brought the concept of NPS to insurance and you measure claims NPS. If you're not the ones underwriting, do you have any actuaries at Plum, by the way?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: We have one, I wouldn't say like an actuary, but someone who understands the job of an actuary. And now I think I'm like half trained now, but I couldn't call myself an actuary yet.

Dhruv Sharma: Well, that is great. But if that's the case and if your strength is really distribution, then what do you guys do with the claims layer to, you know, to keep like a high NPS and also tell us what it is as of, you know, as of its last measurement?

Utsav Somani: Yeah. You've got names like Zomato, Swiggy, Cred, like all the big names. So, yeah.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah. No, I'll first start with why this is important and then the how part. I say this to our team, right? If you're selling insurance, your product is claims and not really insurance. People are buying you because they want to be taken care of when they're in the hospital or outside the hospital after they have spent that money. And can we deliver that promise that we have made to them a year ago or five years ago? So for us, we really think of claims as the product. And hence NPS is the most important metric for us, which is net promoter score. And this also is a very brutal metric. One of the things that we observe early on is the most of the companies measured CSAT and CSAT. It's very easy to get a CSAT if you're measuring it on a one to five scale, like getting a four, four point five is quite easy on a one to 10 scale. Getting it at nine is very easy. But just fundamentally how NPS is calculated. It is such a brutal metric that getting a 50 or a 60 NPS also is extremely hard. And if you look at best of the brands that you would respect, like an Apple or Amazon, they will have an NPS of 50, 60. We took that as a brutal metric that if a business mode is going to be experience and claims experience, let's actually benchmark us against a claims NPS. So that was the why of choosing claims NPS in the first place. The second question you asked was, how do we control it? Because we are not the underwriter. If you think about the experience part, right? Why experience break? Why does the trust break? It's because of two things. One is just the process of claims itself. Either it's too long or too much friction in that process that you're asking me for too much of documentation. You're asking me to do a lot of work of, let's say, couriering the documents, etc. You're asking me to fill complicated forms. Second part is why the trust breaks is you had promised me that if this happens, the company will pay X. Now fulfill that promise, right? I think both of those problems can be solved by someone like Plum. One is on the process. Just make it as digital as possible. You are living in 2026 when we are talking about everything being so easy. Why can't that be done with the claims experience? Why do you need documents to be couriered? Why do you need a claim form to be filled when it can all be automatically filled? In hindsight, now it looks simple. But if you look back in 2020, when we started, everything was really manual. And people would have to chase the insurance companies to send these documents to revert and then have these back and forth, which ended up taking like 45, 60 days of time period for any claims to be approved. Which now, if you think about it, could like ideally it should be done in minutes. We still take 36 hours instead of 36 days. But our goal is how do we get those claims to be done in minutes and not even hours? The second part is the decision making. Let's say if my expense was one lakh, why are you making this 10 different deductions or why are you rejecting the claim? And there are two parts to it. One is education. One is educating people on what are you actually buying? What is covered? What is not covered? Because if you set the right expectation at the time of selling and there's no mis-selling involved, people know very black and white on, OK, if I go to a hospital and this is the treatment and if I spend one lakh rupees, OK, my my registration charges are not going to be covered or my meal that I'm going to take at the hospital is not going to be covered. So it's just setting expectations. And once you set expectations, then it's our job to make sure that the insurance carrier is not making any incorrect deductions. And that can also be automated. So those are fundamentally two things that you can do and what we try to make it happen for our members.

Utsav Somani: Abhishek, just one final question before we welcome Deepak from Oncare to join us for a brief joint discussion. The next bet that you've announced publicly becoming a health care company from a broker company, which I think is super, super interesting, Plum Health, where you're doing diagnostics, AI led health tracking and a couple of other things as well. It's a 200 crore bet that you've announced that you're putting towards this initiative. Tell us the story behind this.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, I think it was always part of our core mission, which is how do we impact the health and financial wellness of people? We fundamentally chose insurance as a starting point because we saw that today. And I said today in 2020, when we started. Ninety five percent of the corporates would spend money on corporate insurance and they were not spending on health. So we use that as a way to get into the life of the HR and into the life of the employees. But at the core, our goal was how do we improve the overall health outcomes of the members that we touch, the employees and their family members? And that has to include preventive health. That has to include primary care. I think once we had a sufficient base of organization and members, is when we started taking those steps towards building for preventive and primary care, for example, telehealth, which is our tele consultations product, the preventive health checkup program. And I think it's the kind of adoption that we are seeing almost. Now, 50 percent of the organizations, they now go and spend on these preventive and primary care programs, which are outside the realm of insurance has been very it's been very reassuring for us that the corporates and the employees are ready to invest. They just need the right kind of product.

Dhruv Sharma: Are the employer organizations comfortable with you building an independent relationship with plum members and, you know, expanding the surface area beyond health to cover even life or general insurance, other products?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: They are. They are. I think there will be some exceptions. There will be some organizations who will always feel that, hey, no, you know, you can't do X, Y and Z. But I would if I were to give a broader answer, 95 percent of the organizations, they, if you think about who are the decision makers, it's the founder, the CEO, the CHRO. Why do they get insurance in the first place? It's not that they woke up one day and said, Today we have to take insurance. For them, it is, hey, how do I take care of my people? And they have trusted Plum to be that partner to take care of their people. So till the time you're doing or building products, which is going to take care of health and financial wellness of the people, they are completely OK for us to do whatever we should.

Utsav Somani: Yeah, I think employee wellness, I think, is becoming a big trend over the last few years because you want to keep your employees healthy so that they're more productive and deliver well for their organization. And just generally contributing to society in a positive manner. But let's complete the story now. So insurance plus delivery. Let's welcome Deepak from OnCare to join us for a 5-10 minute discussion, because there is one research that you put, Abhishek, from Plum, which we want to bring out as well. Deepak, welcome to the show.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: Thanks Utsav.

Utsav Somani: Have you guys met before? Have you met Abhishek from Plum before? No, I've not met Abhishek. We're making new friendships here. So Abhishek, start us off with this data set that you highlighted on how Indians are spending on health, diagnostic, preventive and emergency, especially with the focus on cancer care that was put up on the Plum website. So can you share some interesting tidbits and maybe you can chat around that?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, for us, given that it's been now six years of journey is a lot of almost 100,000 claims that go through us every year, plus a lot of health checkups and doctor consultations. So that started this journey for us that we call data labs, where we collect all of this data to see what kind of insights that we are able to get from there. But I think some of the very common insights that most recent report was on cancer care. And some of the interesting insight was that the average Indian still don't take preventive care seriously. The average Indian still don't know what tests exist in the market. And now if you think specifically about cancer, what are the right biomarkers that they should look for and test for at an annual level or at a biannual level? Even if people know about it, the other challenge was affordability that these cancer markers are really expensive. And most of the Indians, they think that because I'm not seeing a symptom, I'm good. Why should I spend this 5,000, 10,000 rupees on this biomarker on this health checkup, which the combination of this awareness and affordability that leads to most of us deprioritizing some of these potential critical illnesses that we could have. And cancer is one of them. Heart health is another one. And you will see these are the two most common causes of death in the, I would say, in the early 30s and the early 40s. This was not the case two decades ago, but this is now the case with the Indian population.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So rightly put, Abhishek, it's largely, I think, a society thing wherein until we are really sick, we just want that mindset is there that I'm fit. Why should I go? So that is the mindset that prevails in the society. Having said that, there's another notion regarding the current health care providers, that if you enter inside a hospital, that you will have to spend unnecessarily so that rest gap is also there, which at times patients think that while the markers or while some of this test will show minor things, I would be forced to do more tests, to take unnecessary treatment. So that gap that exists between the health care providers and the common public, that again adds to this problem. So with new age companies coming in, educating more, like the initiative that you told that you're doing with the corporates, we're educating them more. So this will probably help bridge that gap. And the experience of insurance providers, the hospital partners, if you are able to provide that right experience to the patients who are coming to us, they will ultimately go out and tell folks that go and get this test done. They are a good service provider who will probably not work in the way you are thinking. They'll work for your health. And I think it will be a joint effort. It will be both on the hospital service provider, the insurance players, and then similarly the corporates educating and talking more about some of these most prevalent cancers. That would help probably solve this problem is what we feel because majorly it's the trust gap. And second is this notion that the notion regarding preventive health care. But I guess with more and more education, we can tackle this.

Utsav Somani: And the data shows that one in 4.7 patients, which is an extremely high number, exceed their five flag insurance limit. So Deepak, how do you handle when or even for you Abhishek, like when people hit their ceiling mid-treatment, how have you handled such cases and what happens in such cases?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So there are two scenarios here from what we have seen. There are some folks who have that out of pocket money ready for that expense. And then there are folks who don't have this sort of money. At our level, what we try to do is if someone is coming with an insurance, we try to educate them at step one that how the overall journey would look. Because the typical behavior that we have seen is if a patient has an insurance, they would not think of the claim amount at step one because when they walk into most of the hospital, a lot of hospitals don't tell them the entire cost at step one. For example, cancer is a mix of surgery, chemotherapy, radiation. At times, what we have heard from doctors is that if we tell them in advance, the patient will not get the treatment done because of which they don't tell them at step one. So suddenly after mid-journey, they realize that that insurance is over. What we are trying to do at our end is we try to give them the full picture of the treatment.

Dhruv Sharma: Is there any sort of point of care health cover available to someone who has been detected with cancer but is uninsured, Deepak or Abhishek?

Utsav Somani: I think they have a cool-off period, right? I think what's that period called where you need to give for pre-existing illness, I think you need to have some gap.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Abhishek, would you like to take that? Sorry, I got disconnected for 10 seconds. Rup, can you repeat that please?

Dhruv Sharma: I was just saying, is there any sort of point of care health cover for someone who has been diagnosed with cancer but was uninsured up to that point?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, no, that's the unfortunate part, which is not, I wouldn't say unfortunate, it's just how financials work, right, which is insurance is meant as a population product. When it's priced, it's priced at a population level. Now, if you start thinking of people who already have been detected with a critical illness and if these are the people who are buying, it is almost impossible to price, right? If I'm having cancer, I'm sure shot going to have, let's say, a 10 lakhs kind of an expense in a year. What is the right price? The right price is 10 lakhs for the insurance company to not lose money, which means why would I buy a cover? And hence, there is, it is almost impossible to design a product for someone who has already been diagnosed and is going an active treatment. Now, there have been some products which have been designed for, because we're talking about cancer, I'm using cancer as an example, there's been some products that have been designed for people who had cancer. And now they're cancer free for some time period, let's say a five year kind of a time period. There could still be a relapse, but there are products that are designed for that kind of people, because still you can say the risk is slightly lower than an active patient. And I think that's the, that's the awareness that we need to build as a society, which is if some of these critical illness, there is a high probability at a population level that it will happen to all of us. And we need to buy this insurance cover before we hit that wall, before we hit that critical illness, because once we know it, we are uninsurable. No one can ever insure us, right? So, and it's just because of how the finance works for any kind of insurance company.

Utsav Somani: But if we were to sign off with both of you, giving us one piece of advice, or one piece of improvement in the health care process or the value chain, what would you guys pick apart from the businesses that you're building?

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Yeah, maybe I'll pick three stakeholders. One is the employers. And this is especially important because employers, I mean, and if you look at India, I think a larger and larger percentage of our population will come into formal employment. And hence employers will play a big role. I think employers have the right kind of resources available to invest in preventive care. I would really urge all the employers to think about what are the right preventive care programs, including cancer checkups that they can institutionalize. And this is a very common thing if you look at it in the US, looking at cancer markers, et cetera, has become a norm. I think in India it has to become a norm as well. Second is for the insurance carriers and the regulator. A majority of the cancer treatments and the cancer drugs are still considered part of what we call as modern treatments or modern drugs. And a lot of insurance companies tend to either not cover it or cover it up to a certain sublimit, roughly a 50 percent sublimit. I think that definition has to go away because the world of research is moving much faster than the world of insurance companies and the regulators. And we have to really catch up to that so that the patients who are undergoing these treatments are not at a disadvantage when they have to take a decision in terms of usage of a treatment, usage of a drug. And third is, I think to the general population that is hearing this, go and invest in your health. I think this cost of 5,000 or 10,000 rupees and doing the right kind of health checkup is nothing in the larger scheme of things. Figure out what are the right biomarkers. So, for example, for cancer, they're like set of five or six biomarkers. If you do it before the age of 40, I think those are enough and it's not that expensive. But it goes a long way because if you treat, if you catch and treat cancer at a certain stage, there's almost like a 99 percent chance that you'll be able to reverse it. Versus let's say at a stage four where there is a one or two percent chance to actually reverse it. So your probability is so different.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: Adding on to Abhishek's point, in terms of policy, one thing that we would definitely like people to pick up is preventing some of the most preventable cancers. For example, cervical cancer. UK has almost eliminated this. I think a couple of days back, I was reading a news where HPV vaccination is being taken up by certain government because this is one of the cancers that we can actually eliminate. But still in India, cervical cancer is the second highest, you could say, contributor to female related cancers. So in policy level, for whichever cancer there is a vaccination or treatment available, we should try to educate more and then get those diseases prevented. At an insurance level, adding on to Abhishek's point, see while like insurance companies, while they are having this say modern treatment capping, it will be better that if, let's say even if they are keeping the capping, the normal public should be aware of it. Because we see a lot of cases where people with 20-25 lakh insurance suddenly realize that the insurance will pay only 2.5 lakh. And that honestly feels like a breach of trust. Because nowadays with more awareness, people are buying those higher insurance packages. But when I talk to those folks, they are not aware that, okay, this capping is there. Till the time the math of it is solved, that they can remove it or till the time we catch up, at least this awareness will make sure that there is no trust gap that is happening, especially when the disease is cancer and when the cost involved is so much. So that is more on the insurance side that we can add more transparency there. And on the general public side, like rightly put by Abhishek, it has to be driven by corporates because they have that platform. So let's say there are different cancer weeks, like the cervical cancer awareness thing, or cervical cancer awareness pap smear test hardly cost 500 rupees. So as a part of this, say their package, healthcare package, if they could just include this for female above a certain age, it will benefit every stakeholder. The insurance payout will be very less as the insurance payout will decrease. The payout for the corporate on the insurance side will decrease. And the employees will be like, again, definitely safe from such a deadly disease. So I think awareness and talking about this similarly for female mammogram test. Again, biomarkers are still, say, a bit more costly. But these two tests which I'm talking about, they are 500 rupees, 1000 rupees test. So for the tests which are available at a lower cost, at least we should try to get more and more people aware about it. So that we can, say, reduce these cases.

Utsav Somani: I mean, the insurance policy document is just a nightmare to read. And funny enough, this episode is happening today because just today morning I was trying to navigate the HDFC Ergo website. And I mean, I gave up and then my wife tried. The policy number, the OTP doesn't come and just renewing. And then the document is like some 18-page document, which I don't even know what the terms are. So then chat GPT, chat GPT, give me a summary. What is working for me? What is against me? So that, but I mean, we use Plum at offline as well. And Abhishek, it's a fantastic experience, the digital card and everything that comes through our partnership, through your partnership with Razorpay. So I think kudos to you for building that service as well. And our employees are covered because of you. Thank you for coming on the show. We'll spend a few minutes with Deepak to understand his business as well and where it stands. So thank you again, Abhishek, for joining us.

Abhishek Poddar — Co-founder & CEO, Plum: Thank you, Dhruv. Thank you, sir.

Utsav Somani: Thank you so much. So, Deepak, we've not given you the chance to introduce your company. Congrats on the new milestones. You've raised a series A as well. So break us, I mean, break it down for us. And what does Oncare do? What does this new fundraise mean for you?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So Oncare is building a chain of cancer care center, basically on two pillars, affordability and transparency. Because these two we feel are the most important factor for a patient who is looking for the treatment outside. We are trying to build it in an, you could say, not a completely asset-light way, but a capital-efficient way. Because the biggest challenge in healthcare is the CAPEX and OPEX. And once these things are getting priced in, in the final bill, the treatment cost suddenly increases. So what we are doing here is we are targeting a certain segment of hospital, the 5200-bedded hospital, because these hospitals are equipped to do this treatment, you could say, from a machinery perspective. What they lack is...

Utsav Somani: So like a corporate oncology department, basically.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: Yes, yes. So to give you an example, if you walk into any corporate hospital, there are different departments on different floors. Ground floor will be ENT, first floor is ortho, like that. That's how the hospital is segregated. So we go to a 5200-bedded hospital, we take a floor on lease, and we set up the oncology department under the Oncare brand. So that is the current model that we are using. So where we do a shopping shop and we outsource the entire cancer department. And everything happening on that floor is owned by us. We are registering with government as a daycare center also for that particular place. All the staff, nursing, operations folks, they are on our payroll. Once the patient is there, they are being completely taken care by Oncare staff. So in this way, we are able to reduce the high CAPEX that goes into building. We are able to utilize the 5200-bedded supply. Like you'll be surprised to know that 80% of the beds in India are with this segment of hospital. Only the corporate hospitals just have 20% of beds. So if we are able to utilize this segment by getting in the right manpower and the equipment that is required to treat cancer, the supply for this treatment suddenly increases. So we are trying to create a brand in this segment where the treatment will be say 30-40% affordable. This is true for any treatment, let's say not only cancer. For any treatment, if you go to a corporate, if the treatment cost is 100 rupees, the same treatment with the same doctor will cost you 60-70 rupees in this. 50-100-bedded setup. So that's where we are trying to create a brand so that we can make this treatment affordable.

Utsav Somani: I mean, how do you do that?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So let's say I'll not quote the name, but some of the cancer wings of certain hospitals are operating at 40-50% margin. And if the disease is so deadly, what we are trying to do is we don't want that 40-50% kind of margin business because like in a lot of chemotherapy drugs, immunotherapy drugs, they are very high margin available. Again, they have to do this. Some of the hospitals have to say charge this amount because of their high capex and opex. At the same time, there are very few people building in this space, mostly run by incumbents. So given the lack of option, it's being run in the way they want because it's such a difficult space to build. But what we are trying to do is we are trying to utilize this free supply of these 5200 bed segment, build the cancer department and then target this 60-70, like 30-40% treatment option available for the patient.

Dhruv Sharma: How much of the treatment or how many treatment paths can actually be conducted on an OPD basis? Deepak, my guess is not all cancer patients have to get admitted all of the time, right?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So if the patient is in late stage or if the primary module of the treatment is medical oncology, which involves chemotherapy and immunotherapy, then that can be done on a daycare basis. So chemotherapy or medical oncology contributes almost 40% of the overall spend of a cancer patient in the segment. So you could say 40% can be done on an OPD basis. The remaining 60% happens on an IPD basis where the patient gets admitted.

Dhruv Sharma: And I've also been meaning to ask you, as a health condition, what sets cancer apart from everything else in terms of just patient care? I believe you have care coordinators, etc. Talk to us about that human aspect of running this business as well.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: When we were entering this business, my co-founder's brother is a surgical oncologist. He told us it's a very sad business, don't get into it. Because when you know that almost 50-60% of patients you are treating will end up dying, it does impact you. It does impact you that the person you were talking to, say, a month back is no more. So you could say that was the most difficult part when we started or ventured into this. But slowly we understood that, hey, this is there. Can we change that? No, probably with some early detection, we can change the success rate a bit. But if the problem exists, if we are just being sad by looking at it, it is still not solving for people. So we thought we'll take this up, even though it is sad, but we'll take this up and try to make whatever life is remaining for the patient as easy and convenient as possible.

Utsav Somani: And what's the scale of the business now? You're only operational in Delhi NCR for now, I believe?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: Yeah, we have four centers in Delhi NCR. Post this fundraise, we are looking to expand to Bangalore. We'll be opening six centers in Bangalore and a couple of more in Delhi NCR.

Utsav Somani: And when you embed yourself into these hospitals, do you bring in your talent as well? Because India has a surprisingly low number of doctors and even a lower number of doctors in the oncology world, right?

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So here, while for India overall it's true, but for metros, the story is pretty different because the doctors, just like all of us, want to stay in metro city. So in top, say, six to eight cities, the doctor supplies abundance. Apart from, say, what we have seen at least in Delhi NCR, apart from a couple of institutions, the doctors at most of the other, say, private hospitals have ample time and lower patient load. So this problem is more of a tier two and tier three problem because the supply is concentrated in the metro cities. So that's how it is there. So when we enter into tier two and tier three, we would have to come up with new models for doctor engagement and retention so that we don't face that problem. But in tier one cities, we don't see any doctor challenge for now.

Dhruv Sharma: So at this point, everyone has to travel to where the care can be provided. Because cancer incidence is certainly not concentrated in a handful of pockets. That's, to my mind, evenly distributed. So people have to travel. Deepak, I'm sure you must do a lot more research than anyone else that we know. What is behind the rising cancer incidence in our country? I believe the numbers 1 in 9 Indians at some point are likely to have to contend with this condition. So what's behind it?

Utsav Somani: Is it higher than global averages?

Dhruv Sharma: I don't even know what the global number is. Maybe Deepak has a benchmark. Yes.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: So, see, the overall number is high in India because simply the population is the highest. But the incident rate is similar, especially because the change in lifestyle is happening across the world. So there are two major contributors for increase in cases in India. One is change in lifestyle. So I'll give an example here. Say some 10-15 years back in females, the most prevailing cancer was cervical cancer because of menstrual hygiene. But menstrual hygiene has improved. But because of change in lifestyle, breast cancer has surpassed. And it's majorly attributed to change in lifestyle. So change in lifestyle is one. Second is more and more detection. Because, say, some years back, people had cancer. They just died. Nobody knew they had cancer. So these two things put together are increasing the active, you could say, or identified or reported number of cases.

Utsav Somani: All right, Deepak. Thank you so much. And kudos to you for hitting great milestones and wishing you all the success because you are a solid, solid mission. And yes, make India cancer-free. And yeah, wishing you all the best. Thank you for coming on the show.

Deepak Kumar — Co-founder, Oncare: Thanks, Utsav. Thanks, Rohit.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners. Now our final set of guests for today. We have Jinal and Vivek from MyFandom. I don't think the company needs an introduction because we're wearing what they've created for us. But they're the makers of these fantastic t-shirts. Yes, our community is raving about them. So, I mean, we don't ask you to introduce the companies. Tell us the cool artists that you work with, apart from the offline network, of course.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Thank you so much, actually, Utsav and Rohit, for inviting us. It's been a great journey working with, you know, top most artists from around the globe, along with, you know, Indian as well as multiple other brands like yours. And, you know, certain IPs of pop culture. It's been a great journey. We're working with, you know, Coldplay to achieve into everyone else.

Utsav Somani: I remember you sending us a Travis Scott sweatshirt as well, which was designed by Travis Scott himself. Although I'm not a fan of his, but I mean, it's just cool to see like how people are supporting the artists that they're doing. And I think that brings me to my next question. I mean, this journey of building infrastructure from commerce for artists to supporting artists, like you're starting off with merchandise, but where does the journey go from here?

Vivek Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: So I think it's just merchandise being the first stage where we start with the fandom journey, right? The larger goal is, of course, for a fan to live their fandom in the fullest. And also for artists to kind of give back that love, which fans give them for their entire life. And sort of build a revenue stream also, while they fulfill the fandom. So this includes, of course, merchandising, live experiences, fan pop-ups, etc. So it just starts from there. And then eventually it helps them to build their live events and music streaming, all those ventures. So it basically helps them build their fan base stronger.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: So our idea of building this entire fandom ecosystem is to enable Indian fans, those global experience that everyone around the globe is actually having. And yeah.

Dhruv Sharma: Which is the most evolved place in the world in terms of fandom, where there's fans of everything, for everything. And there's all that. I think easy US, right?

Utsav Somani: Or am I wrong? US is commercialized literally every single thing that you can sell. Like I think.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Absolutely. And in current times, if you look at, even Korea has done a massive things around the fan and fan culture and building a fandom. They've devoted a lot of time and effort from the infrastructure everywhere across to build that soft power.

Utsav Somani: But in terms of merchandising, what are the different categories? Like sports is one. Live artist is one. Are there others that you've seen? Like people from, I don't know, Bollywood, people wanting to buy stuff that Bollywood artists have been wearing.

Vivek Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: So I think when we sort of bifurcate merchandising, right? So wherever there is an influx of sort of emotional connect between a fan and IP or an artist or a movie or a sports. So any of such pop culture event which happens where a fan is emotionally connected at this point is this is a space where merchandise can be developed. And now we are in the time where the brands are so consumer friendly, so fan friendly, such as TOM, right? So the fan likes the vibe of the brand so much that they look forward to having the merchandise.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: So ideally it's being considered as expressing yourself, you know, and, you know, living that at the fullest. And that's where the merch comes into the picture. But at a large scale, if you look at, it's the intention of the artist or a brand or, you know, even a movie to connect and engage with their fan in a most organic and, you know, their raw sense. And that's where the, you know, the business.

Utsav Somani: Do you service other industries as well, apart from like just music or is that your biggest category for now?

Dhruv Sharma: Where are the fans accumulating is the question on my mind.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: When we started, of course, we, our sole purpose to, you know, fulfill fandom and, you know, tickle that fan and everyone and make sure that they are empowered with what they stand for. But yes, with the influx of music-related activity happening in India, we're seeing that most fans are willing to buy music merchandise. But on the larger scale, if you look at there is we are catering to, from the bands like Netflix to Budweiser. And on the larger scale, on the other side, we are also working with, you know, culture forward brands like yours and others as well. We are also seeing a lot of interest in movie, movies and series merchandise from the fan side, but it will take some time to build it with that.

Utsav Somani: What about, I mean, telling them, like do they come inbound to you where they say that, Hey, we're doing the show or we're doing this, bringing this artist and we want to get extra revenue from merchandise and connect with our fans or is it, how does this process work for you?

Vivek Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: So I think, I mean, when we started, there was no visible fandom merchandise market as such, right? So we sort of took that in charge and kind of educated a lot of artists that the reason why they should make their merchandise. Over the years, we kept doing it and we kept launching like, you know, a larger sort of merchandise for Indian artists. When we were on this journey, a lot of international folks caught our attention. They came to us, they said, okay, you guys are doing something very good. We are looking at like, you know, doing something for our Indian fans. Would you like to work together? And I think that started the spark and took us to working on a bunch of this crazy stuff that we've been doing from Coldplay to HCD and like everywhere else.

Dhruv Sharma: I want to ask an IP question. Let's say Utsav sends me a song over the weekend. I take a fancy to it. Monday I send you guys a design asking for some t-shirts. Tuesday you get a second design and this keeps, you know, we keep going back and forth. How soon before either I get a notice, legal notice, you get a legal notice for infringing some sort of copyright or some sort of IP?

Utsav Somani: Yeah, because India is typically like, I mean, counterfeit, right? I mean, you go to like Sarojini Nagar and stuff, you can literally, I don't know, buy anything off the street. So there must be like different markets, like parallel markets for this.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: When it comes to us, we are completely, you know, always official as I moved on, like we do not want to encourage anything which is not official, which is not, you know, which is not embedded or the artist or brand's value into a piece of merchandise. And definitely there, like, you know, every market there is, there is a sector where we just counterfeit or, you know, make it in a different versions. But our sole purpose is to make sure that it is fair to the artists, it is fair to the fans as well to receive the official merchandise.

Dhruv Sharma: So when we get a t-shirt from you guys and it has, let's say, the album cover of a, you know, very, very popular artist, we can be almost assured that you've worked it out with that artist's team and we're covered, neither of us are going to be in trouble. Okay. Also send me some song recommendations of the weekend and then...

Utsav Somani: I'll send you like Karan Oslo songs which Dhruv is going to delete instantly. Indian culture for concert going is just pure horrible. Like I think save your money, like save up and maybe just go for fewer concerts and just travel overseas. Like in my opinion, like I think India really needs to amp up its experience for live events. And I think District did mention that they will spend on developing the infra as well because I think it's somewhat a public problem, but I think private money has to come and solve it to some extent with help from the public agencies as well. What are the cool artists that you've done in the last six months?

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Manusha Shankar. Nice. She's like a legend. She came for India tour and across six cities and we have... The merchandise itself is unique in its own way. It's basically from her trilogy, Haiku. It's written by herself and like there's a... The merchandise is also signed by her and we have embroidered entire thing on the piece of, you know, watch.

Utsav Somani: Nice. Do you have any Coldplay signed t-shirts for me? Posters that I can like get on the side from you guys?

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Yeah, probably we'll talk about that.

Utsav Somani: Let's talk after the show. I mean, people have been asking us where they can get this and we've always said that be active on our community, contribute value, get people excited about the show and share unique insights because we bring six to seven founders across the week on the show. And they, I mean, give us so much knowledge that I think there is so much to be discussed piece by piece. Like so many different threads that people can pick apart and the community is getting excited just because of this and the conversations have gone up over the last week since we've dropped this much. So thank you so much again. When should a founder... I mean, let's bring it back and wrap it up with the founder lens. Like when should a founder of a tech company come to you and should they do merchandise? And what kind of companies or startups should do?

Vivek Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: I think any company who has a larger story to tell and a long way to go should make their merchandise because I think it's just the obvious first step to give back something to your team, to your stakeholders, to all your users. And it just builds a very long kind of culture amongst all your customers and our team. So I think it's a very good storytelling tool and it sort of takes you long, long, long game.

Utsav Somani: All right. Thank you so much for coming on the show and making us look cool. Thank you, guys.

Jinal Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Thank you so much for having us. Thank you.

Vivek Ajmera — Co-founder, MYFANDOM: Always a pleasure to work with you.

Dhruv Sharma: Thanks, guys.

Utsav Somani: All right, listeners, that's it from us. We'll see you on Monday. There's an India final at the ICC World Cup. India's playing New Zealand in the Narendra Modi Stadium. We've not had luck in the past at that stadium, but we're hoping it changes this Sunday. We'll come and discuss it with you on Monday. See you at 4 p.m. Bye-bye.