India’s largest digital wallet company Paytm will now start offering life insurance cover of up to Rs 5 lakh to its offline partners and their staffs. One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, said that this effort will help in giving a push towards realizing India’s vision of the digital economy.
Paytm will offer life insurance cover through its newly formed entity Paytm Life Insurance Corporation Ltd, which was established in February this year. This newly formed entity will offer life insurance cover in partnership with the existing life insurance player. The name of this life insurance player has not been disclosed by Paytm.
IRDA, the insurance regulatory body had granted Paytm the corporate license to sell insurance products in 2017. The license is reportedly valid only for three years.
“We firmly believe that our partners are an integral part of the Paytm family and to support them, we are offering cashless life insurance to them and their staff members. This insurance will offer their families a much needed financial security and it’s the best way to thank them for everything they continue to do for us,” Kiran Vasireddy, COO of Paytm, said.
Paytm aggressively diversifying the business
Offering life insurance cover to help digitize India’s economy may seem like a pretext if one looks into how Paytm during last few months has been aggressively trying to diversify its business. Last year, the Noida based startup took a first big step on business diversification front after it launched Paytm Payment Bank. It soon followed by setting up Paytm Money Ltd in the beginning of this year to sell mutual funds and other wealth management services.
Separately, Paytm is also trying to make serious inroads in India’s online shopping market through its e-commerce venture Paytm Mall. The venture is already been heavily funded by Alibaba & SoftBank and is expected to give tough competition to incumbent market leaders Flipkart and Amazon.