Insurance is probably one of the most important things that helps you financially when things go out of your control. Whether it is a car or your health, you can get it insured. Even every single financial planner or advisor tells you to have insurance.
Well, many people buy insurance because they have to, not because they want to. The story is totally different. Many people who have insurance today bought the insurance mainly for two reasons. One is by understanding and realizing the worth of having insurance, and the other is most popular in India. Any guess? Just because an agent is calling you continuously and by listening to his stories you will buy random insurance, this is the case why many people bought insurance. Now when they want to utilize the insurance, they get to know the ground realities and clauses that it carries. Sometimes it takes months to claim, and sometimes it doesn’t get claimed at all. So, people actually haven’t understood the actual worth of insurance because of many factors that affect it.
Whatever it is, starting from auto insurance, it comes with a lot of paperwork and a lot of traditional formalities in this current fast-paced world. So, by understanding all the odds of the industry, a duo started out to revolutionize the industry with a digital-first approach. The startup that we are referring to is “Acko.”
ACKO was founded in 2016 by Varun Dua and Ruchi Deepak, with one simple but radical idea: to make insurance work for people, not against them. Both Varun and Ruchi had seen the industry’s flaws up close. They weren’t outsiders throwing stones at insurance from a distance; they had lived inside the system and understood where it broke down.
Two problems stood out the most: 1. Broken processes. Even something as straightforward as auto insurance was weighed down by paperwork, agents, and endless approvals. Buying or renewing a policy could feel like a chore, and filing a claim was often an exhausting battle. 2. Unfair pricing. Premiums felt arbitrary. Customers rarely understood how their risk was calculated or why they were paying the amount they did. Insurance pricing lacked transparency, and customers always felt like they were on the losing end.
That’s when they decided to start from scratch. ACKO was born as India’s first fully digital insurance company with just speed, simplicity, and transparency powered by technology. ACKO offers insurance in a fast, simple, and fully digital mode. It started with car and bike insurance, letting people buy or renew policies online in minutes, without agents or paperwork. Then came health insurance, designed to be transparent and easy to use with cashless claims and flexible coverage. One of ACKO’s biggest innovations is micro-insurance, which is small, affordable coverage like phone screen protection, trip insurance, or Ola ride insurance, built right into apps people already use. It also provides group health plans for companies. With fair, data-driven pricing, ACKO makes insurance affordable, hassle-free, and truly customer-first.
Now when they are doing something unique, their performance also has to show impact, right? Yes, because of its digital-first approach, the company has scaled up quickly. Recently it had shown a strong and steady growth as the company crossed the ₹2,000 crore revenue mark, reporting ₹2,106 crore in FY24, a 19.8% jump from ₹1,758 crore in FY23. Acko managed to narrow its losses by 9%, bringing them below ₹700 crore, showing improved efficiency and cost control. A major driver of this growth was gross premium income, which accounted for 73.35% of total revenue, growing 33.9% YoY to ₹1,587 crore. Beyond premiums, Acko also generated income through service contracts, recoveries from reinsurers, commissions, and investment returns, which pushed its total income.
Now you may think, only the digital-first approach alone helped it, right? Absolutely not. It also has other reasons for the scale it has today. The first big win was claims and settlements. For decades, claims were the nightmare stage of insurance. People waited weeks, sometimes months, to get reimbursed. ACKO changed that narrative completely. With an exceptional 94.54% claim settlement ratio, it showed customers they were quick resolutions. By January 2024, ACKO even managed to settle some claims in as little as 12 minutes, proving that technology could make insurance not only fairer but also incredibly fast.
The second breakthrough was removing commissions. Traditional insurance always had agents pushing policies for incentives, which inflated costs and created distrust. ACKO went 100% digital, cutting out the middlemen entirely. The result is lower premiums for customers and a direct, transparent relationship between the insurer and the insured.
The third strength was scale and variety. From auto insurance to health to micro-policies embedded in apps, ACKO issued more than 8 crore policies; it was proof that people were willing to trust a digital-first insurer for both big-ticket covers and everyday protection. By combining trust (high settlement ratio), transparency (no commissions), and scale (8+ crore policies), ACKO created a winning formula.
Because it is doing all of that, many big investors supported them in their journey over the period, and as a result, it raised millions since inception. That’s how ACKO is disrupting the insurance space.
Also Read: Why India Is Witnessing a Marketplace Boom Like Never Before
