Twenty-four-year-old Khet Singh, a student at IIM Bangalore, didn’t have to choose between getting an MBA degree and becoming an entrepreneur. In June 2020, as a second-year student, he co-founded a start-up, ClaimBuddy, together with entrepreneur Ajit Patel. The company uses technology to help make insurance claims hassle-free for patients and hospitals. Singh launched it under IIMB’s NS Raghavan Centre For Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) to benefit from its incubator support and mentorship.
Hospitals face long delays in payments from insurance companies, while patients grapple with the ambiguous terms and conditions in the health policies. There is no clarity either over the out-of-pocket expense incurred when using a health insurance card. ClaimBuddy assists patients in getting the highest claim payout while helping hospitals streamline their financial and operational processes.
IIM Bangalore student Khet Singh (second from left) with the staff of ClaimBuddy, the health insurance-focused start-up he co-founded.
The start-up’s 20-strong staff is a combination of tech professionals, doctors, and medical specialists. The company says it is profitable and has processed claims worth more than ₹15 crore, with nearly 50 partner hospitals in Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, and Mumbai. It attracted an undisclosed amount in the seed funding round led by Titan Capital and other marquee investors such as LV Angel Fund and First Cheque.
Bipin Shah, partner at Titan Capital, says: “ClaimBuddy is a one-stop solution and the whole process is patient-centric. The domain knowledge which the team has is worth appreciating.”
IIMB’s incubators are turning not just students entrepreneurial, but also the faculty and other staff. Singh attributes his start-up’s rapid growth to the entrepreneurial-minded education at IIMB and the learnings from his previous work experience in the healthcare space.
“IIMB has helped me in many ways. We registered as a student-run venture under NSRCEL and Prof Nagaraja Prakasam is our mentor. Many professors from entrepreneurship and healthcare economics courses helped a lot. Prof Arnab Mukherjee is our advisor and Prof K Kumar has guided us throughout.”
Access to capital is key to taking ideas from a classroom to the marketplace. Kshitij Saxena, Professor, Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, became the first angel investor for ClaimBuddy. He points out that the company has already hired several employees to manage the many paying customers. “Singh has achieved this alongside his MBA coursework; and who wouldn’t invest in an entrepreneur with ambition and tenacity,” says Prof Saxena.
Juggling work and school, Singh says he picked relevant elective courses in his final year of college to suit his business needs. Surprisingly, he finds the second year, when he founded the start-up, relatively less hectic compared to the first year.
Soon to graduate, he can lay claim to being a successful MBA-entrepreneur.