Amazon now sells auto insurance in India

Comment

Amazon’s India business said on Thursday it has begun offering auto insurance to cover two and four-wheelers in the country, marking the American giant’s first foray into this financial services category globally.

The e-commerce giant said it had inked a deal with Mumbai-headquartered Acko General Insurance to offer customers car and motor-bike insurance. Amazon is also an investor in Acko.

Mahendra Nerurkar, chief executive and director of Amazon Pay in India, said on Wednesday evening at a fintech conference that the company was planning to expand its insurance service to offer coverage on health, flight and cabs.

The auto insurance is available to customers through Amazon Pay on the e-commerce giant’s website and app. The company said buying insurance will take less than two minutes and requires no paperwork.

“This coupled with services like hassle-free claims with zero paperwork, one-hour pick-up, 3-day assured claim servicing and 1 year repair warranty – in select cities, as well as an option for instant cash settlements for low value claims, making it beneficial for customers,” it added.

Customers who have subscribed to Amazon Prime, the company’s loyalty program that costs about $13 a year in India, will be able to access additional benefits and discounts, Amazon said without identifying those benefits.

India’s insurance market is the latest financial services sector that has attracted the attention of local and international tech giants. Paytm, India’s most valued startup, and its chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, acquired insurance firm Raheja QBE for a sum of $76 million earlier this month.

In India, only a fraction of the nation’s 1.3 billion people currently have access to insurance, and some analysts say that digital firms could prove crucial in bringing these services to the masses.

According to rating agency ICRA, insurance products had reached less than 3% of the population as of 2017. An average Indian makes about $2,100 a year, according to the World Bank. Of those Indians who had purchased an insurance product, they were spending less than $50 on it in 2017, ICRA estimated.

“Our vision is to make Amazon Pay the most trusted, convenient and rewarding way to pay for our customers. Delighted by this experience, there has been a growing demand for more services. In line with this need, we are excited to launch an auto insurance product that is affordable, convenient, and provides a seamless claims experience,” said Vikas Bansal, director and head of financial services at Amazon Pay in India, in a statement.

Though Amazon Pay is available in several markets, the payments service’s offering in India remains unmatched. The company has used the world’s second largest internet market, where it has invested more than $6.5 billion to date, as a testbed to explore various unique opportunities. The Amazon Pay app in India, for instance, also sells movie and flight tickets.

More TechCrunch

Get the industry’s biggest tech news

Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage.

Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly.

The latest Fintech news and analysis, delivered every Tuesday.

TechCrunch Mobility is your destination for transportation news and insight.

By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice.

Tags

Kodiak Robotics is taking self-driving trucks off road to reach profitability faster

Don Burnette, CEO and co-founder of self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics, had an “a-ha” moment when the company started working with the U.S. Department of Defense.  Kodiak’s mission has always…

Lodestar’s robotic arm will be an orbital ‘first responder’ for satellites in need

Satellites are among our most critical infrastructure, providing everything from GPS to disaster coordination, yet their inherent inaccessibility leaves them vulnerable to relatively simple technical issues or attacks. London-based Lodestar…

Intron Health gets backing for its speech recognition tool that recognizes African accents

Voice recognition is getting integrated in nearly all facets of modern living, but there remains a big gap: speakers of minority languages, and those with thick accents or speech disorders…

GM-backed Addionics aims to make lithium-ion batteries cheaper with wavy foil

The startup has developed a way to create copper and aluminum foils that are laced with tiny holes and riddled with undulating peaks and valleys.

Revolut receives long-awaited UK banking license

This is a significant milestone for the London-based fintech company, particularly since it has been trying to secure this license since 2021.

Oversight Board wants Meta to refine its policies around AI-generated explicit images

The Board wants Meta to change the terminology it uses for labeling explicit, AI-generated images from “derogatory” to “non-consensual.”

Google Maps adds a slew of features to entice Indian drivers, commuters and travelers

Google Maps is improving navigation through flyovers and narrow roads in India through new feature updates.

bunch raises $15.5M for its platform that simplifies investment management for VCs

Public market investors have a large variety of infrastructure and software that helps them keep track of, analyze and manage their investments, but that’s not the case for investors in…

Jio partners with Taiwan’s MediaTek to tap into two-wheeler EV market

India’s Jio has partnered with Taiwanese semiconductor giant MediaTek to launch its 4G smart dashboards for electric two-wheelers.

Hacker claims theft of Piramal Group’s employee data

A hacker claims to be selling data relating to thousands of current and former employees of India’s Piramal Group.

CRED launches personal finance manager for India’s affluent

CRED, an Indian fintech startup, has rolled out a new feature that will help its customers manage and gain deeper insights into their cash flow, as the startup seeks to…

A new Chinese video-generating model appears to be censoring politically sensitive topics

A powerful new video-generating AI model became widely available today — but there’s a catch: The model appears to be censoring topics deemed too politically sensitive by the government in…

Star Catcher wants to build a space power grid to supercharge orbital industry

Our growth as a civilization is tightly coupled to our ability to sufficiently generate ever-increasing amounts of electricity. Could the same be true in space?  Star Catcher Industries, a startup…

Mistral’s Large 2 is its answer to Meta and OpenAI’s latest models

For frontier AI models, when it rains, it pours. Mistral released a fresh new flagship model on Wednesday, Large 2, which it claims to be on par with the latest…

Researchers are training home robots in simulations based on iPhone scans

Researchers at MIT CSAIL this week are showcasing a new method for training home robots in simulation.

Apple Maps launches on the web to challenge Google Maps

Apple announced on Wednesday that Apple Maps is now available on the web via a public beta, which means you can now access the service directly from your browser. The…

Alternative app store AltStore PAL adds third-party iOS apps in wake of EU Apple ruling

AltStore, an alternative app store, has launched its first batch of third-party iOS apps in the European Union. The rollout comes a few months after the company launched an updated…

Bing previews its answer to Google’s AI Overviews

Microsoft this afternoon previewed its answer to Google’s AI-powered search experiences: Bing generative search. Available for only a “small percentage” of users at the moment, Bing generative search, underpinned by…

This Week in AI: How Kamala Harris might regulate AI

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. Last Sunday, President Joe Biden announced that he no longer plans to seek reelection, instead offering his “full endorsement” of VP Kamala…

VCs are still pouring billions into generative AI startups

But the fate of many generative AI businesses — even the best-funded ones — looks murky.

Colin Kaepernick lost control of his story. Now he wants to help creators own theirs

Thousands of stories have been written about former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick. If anyone knows a thing or two about losing control of your own narrative,…

CrowdStrike offers a $10 apology gift card to say sorry for outage

Several people who received the CrowdStrike offer found that the gift card didn’t work, while others got an error saying the voucher had been canceled.

TikTok Lite exposes users to harmful content, say Mozilla researchers

TikTok Lite, a low-bandwidth version of the video platform popular across Africa, Asia and Latin America, is exposing users to harmful content because of its lack of safety features compared…

‘Model collapse’: Scientists warn against letting AI eat its own tail

If the models continue eating each other’s data, perhaps without even knowing it, they’ll progressively get weirder and dumber until they collapse.

Astranis is set to build Omega constellation after $200M Series D

Astranis has fully funded its next-generation satellite program, called Omega, after closing its $200 million Series D round, the company said Wednesday.  “This next satellite is really the milestone into…

After AgentGPT’s success, Reworkd pivots to web-scraping AI agents

Reworkd’s founders went viral on GitHub last year with AgentGPT, a free tool to build AI agents that acquired more than 100,000 daily users in a week. This earned them…

Announcing the agenda for the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

We’re so excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated AI Stage presented by Google Cloud to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and Space as the other industry-focused…

CityRock launches second fund to back founders from diverse backgrounds

The firm has numerous legs to it, ranging from a venture studio to standard funds, where it does everything from co-founding companies to deploying capital.

X launches underwhelming Grok-powered ‘More About This Account’ feature

Since launching xAI last year, Elon Musk has been using X as a sandbox to test some of the Grok model’s AI capabilities. Beyond the basic chatbot, X uses the…

Lakera, which protects enterprises from LLM vulnerabilities, raises $20M

Lakera, a Swiss startup that’s building technology to protect generative AI applications from malicious prompts and other threats, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by European…

About

Legal

Trending Tech Topics

Powered by WordPress VIP