Mumbai, May 16, 2023. Impact Guru, India’s leading online medical fundraising platform, has formed a parent brand CarePal Group which would be an integrated healthcare financing ecosystem. As a parent brand, CarePal Group will allow its business entities to function independently yet serve the common purpose of bridging the gap to provide accessible and affordable healthcare financing for over millions of patients by 2030. It will serve as the corporate parent brand for the following entities:
- Impact Guru- India’s leading online medical fundraising platform enabling online fund raising for various medical expenses such as cancer, transplants, rare diseases, accidents and emergency care through crowdfunding. It aggregates a large number of online payments to allow any individual requiring financial assistance to raise funds for any social cause. Since its inception, ImpactGuru.com has helped over 30,000 patients through its 30,00,000+ donor community across Tier I & II locations in India.
- CarePal Secure- CarePal Secure aims to bring together insurance, healthcare providers, and new age health tech players to create customized offerings for its customers as well as its partner networks. The strategic direction of CarePal Secure will be to emerge as an integrated health protection marketplace providing customized solutions to mitigate rising healthcare expenses. CarePal Secure recently reached its first milestone of servicing 10,000+ customers.
- CarePal Money- CarePal Money aims to create a marketplace providing healthcare loans at affordable prices to patients. The brand’s vision is to enable access to affordable healthcare loans through collaborations with leading lending institutions across the country. Patients with partner hospitals will be the key beneficiaries.
Speaking on the restucturing, Piyush Jain, Co-founder & CEO, CarePal Group and Khushboo Jain, Co-founder & COO, CarePal Group said “India has a major healthcare financing problem due to the high out-of-pocket expenses resulting in a $72bn annual gap. Every minute, more than INR 26 lakhs worth of funds are required by middle class patients to fund their healthcare from savings, relatives, friends, formal and informal money lenders. Over 500 million of the middle-class population have zero health insurance while the vast majority have inadequate health insurance with a typical sum assured of under INR 5 lakhs. Hence, only a fully integrated solution, like CarePal, combining the power of crowdfunding, lending, and insurance can holistically solve the patients’ problem of financing medical expenses.”
Commenting on the move, Jin Jeong, Managing Director at Apis Partners LLP, said ”Since ApisInsurtech Fund I LP’s original investment in April 2021, we have supported the management team’s strategic vision to create holistic healthcare financing solutions that prioritise accessibility and affordability for all Indians. More than 55 million Indians who are being pushed into poverty annually due to healthcare expenses could benefit from more comprehensive alternative financing platforms. We believe CarePal Group, encompassing both lending and insurance solutions, offers a credible platform that can help improve healthcare access in India.”
Ajay Mahipal, Director, HealthQuad also shared his views: “Healthcare in India is plagued by “Iron Triangle” of Access, Cost and Quality. Apart from access, one of the other major concerns, therefore, is affordability. According to estimates, out-of-pocket payments still account for 62% of the total health expenditure in India leading to financial distress for many households. Healthcare Financing, therefore, offers a huge opportunity in India – in particular for the middle income who get covered neither by the government nor adequately by private insurance. HealthQuad firmly believes in the need of an integrated healthcare financing solution to ensure equitable access to quality healthcare for all. We are excited to see the way CarePal Group plans to synergize the power of crowdfunding, lending and insurance plugging the gaps in the Indian healthcare financing ecosystem.”
