Futurance – the flagship corporate engagement program aimed at identifying startups that develop innovative and cutting-edge solutions – is the outcome of the continued partnership between HDFC Life, one of India’s leading life insurance companies, and IvyCamp, an initiative of IvyCap Ventures Advisors Pvt. Ltd. This program has now entered its fifth phase.
The last four phases have successfully provided opportunities for eleven startups to engage with HDFC Life’s leadership, collaborate with the business teams, expand their customer base, and commercialise their products. Startups from the fraud detection and metaverse space got selected in the fourth phase.
Phase 5 of the Futurance program, aims to scout for startups across the following use cases including but not limited to:
- Alternate & Augmented data: Data from alternate sources to validate customer details, and marketing and enhance the underwriting model
- Medical/Health Tech: Remote health testing for customer onboarding & underwriting
- Innovative Sales Tech: Sales tech solutions for lead generation, customer screening, and insurance distribution
- AI-based Vision & Voice solutions: AI-based smart-vision solutions to enhance customer experience
Speaking on the launch of the fifth phase Prasun Gajri – Chief Investment Officer, HDFC Life, said, “At HDFC Life, we are constantly innovating in every area. We have an advanced sales stack, advanced capabilities using vision, voice, and text AI via external partners and internal team capabilities, and many other innovations that are part of our processes.
We are constantly looking to raise the bar and enhance our capabilities thereby offering value to all stakeholders. The aim is to simplify life insurance, end-to-end for our prospective and existing customers, employees as well as all our partners.
Futurance, a connect and outreach program for startups began in 2019, to build solutions to meet some of the industry’s challenges and encourage new thinking and innovation. The first four phases have witnessed over 450 applications. In the fifth phase, we look forward to collaborating with young minds and integrating fresh ideas and innovative tech that will enable us to offer value to all.”
Anju Gupta, Co-founder, and President of IvyCamp said, “Our long association with HDFC Life has been very unique and meaningful in adding value to HDFC Life’s business and internal innovation efforts through collaboration with high-potential startups with disruptive solutions. The collaboration has also enabled the startups to scale and opened access to a larger customer base. Today, with the launch of Phase 5 of Futurance, we are excited to continue this partnership to create growth and value through the startup ecosystem, and continue adding value for HDFC Life.”
mFilterIt and GMetriXR got selected as the winners of Phase 4 and these two companies will work with HDFC Life. Two startups TouchlessID & Perkant Tech who also participated in the final round received a special mention from team HDFC Life.
- mFilterIt: Pioneers in Ad Fraud Detection solutions, Business Intelligence, Brand Safety.
- GMetriXR: a no-code XR platform to create training modules, online stores, product showcases, immersive tours, and more.
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