How Finhaat Is Bringing Insurance And Wealth Creation To India’s Rural & Semi-Urban Markets

On a sweltering afternoon, an Indian farmer stares at his parched, cracked field. Months of effort have been undone due to an erratic monsoon. Elsewhere, relentless downpours trigger floods that wipe out crops before they can be harvested. Farmers today are aware of crop insurance against natural calamities and pestilence. But despite many such schemes like the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana, few are fully prepared to fall back on those policies when disasters strike. 

In many cases, errors in claim filing and/or inadequate documents hinder the process. It is the same story for millions of farmers across rural India. This is not surprising.

Although India is projected to emerge as the third-largest economy by 2028, growing to $5.7 Tn, per a Morgan Stanley report, its insurance penetration dipped for a second consecutive year to 3.7% in FY24, about half the global average of 7%. However, insurance premiums rose 7.7% to INR 11.2 Lakh Cr, according to the Economic Survey 2024-25, indicating that the demand exists for the safety net of financial protection, but the ground-level distribution does not. The reasons: A fragmented market, low awareness and a glut of complex financial products failing to cater to the masses, especially rural consumers.

Founded in 2021 by three alumni of the Institute of Rural Management (IRMA) — Vinod Singh, Sandeep Katiyar and Navneet Srivastava — Mumbai-based fintech startup Finhaat aims to bridge that gap. The founding team, veterans who had earlier worked for storied companies such as Avendus, HSBC, Aditya Birla Insurance and Future Generali, quickly realised that the rural fintech story had so far been dominated by credit. Lending platforms and agri-fintechs stepped into the void left by traditional banks, using data and technology to extend loans. However, few addressed the other two legs of financial inclusion — insurance and wealth creation.

Finhaat began by distributing insurance products in 2022 to cater to India’s vast rural and semi-urban markets before expanding into wealth management and wellness services. The insurance broking platform has built a B2B SaaS model to work closely with individual agents (point-of-sale persons or PoSPs with knowledge of local communities) and rural-focussed institutions, microfinance firms, non-banking financial companies (including Nidhi companies), cooperative societies and farmer producer organisations (FPOs). 

The platform distributes life, health, general and parametric insurance products through a network of more than 200 institutions and 3K+ individual agents across 85% of India’s pin codes. Its proprietary tech delivers affordable financial products tailored to customer needs through digital channels. Since launch, the startup claims to have served 8 Mn customers, primarily via curated insurance distributed through institutions. Beyond distribution, Finhaat offers various services such as claim management and data-based trend analysis.

It also launched Finhaat Wealth in January, a tech-driven and distributor-assisted wealth management vertical offering tools for investments, retirement and long-term savings.

Finhaat earns revenue through platform fees and product-linked commissions while offering a zero-CAPEX model for its institutional and individual partners. The fintech reported more than 20% YoY revenue growth in FY25, reaching INR 30 Cr+ from INR 25 Cr in FY24.

Inside Finhaat’s Full Tech Stack For Bharat

“When we started, digital distribution in rural India was lagging and much of the workflow was manual. With Finhaat, we wanted to leverage the power of technology and build something scalable, sustainable and efficient,” said founder & CEO Vinod Singh. “The goal was to set up a fully digital distribution platform for insurance products, allowing us to streamline all operations and use data to customise products for our target audience.”

Accessing and managing one’s financial health should be simple in a digital-first economy. But for many Indians, insurance, or any other financial product, remained intimidating, often due to a lack of early exposure and trust. Therefore, Finhaat emphasises user education and technology integration to build a trust bridge for underserved communities. Its distribution platform is designed to offer clear, reliable financial solutions, while its agent partners are trained to demystify complex concepts and provide in-person advisory services.    

Given Finhaat’s multi-partner model, another critical challenge was designing a system that was intuitive for users, able to digitise curated insurance  and robust enough to scale. The outcome was a B2B SaaS platform integrating partners seamlessly to distribute and service low-cost, high-volume insurance products. The startup also built a proprietary claims management framework to ensure claim settlement in under a week, compared to the industry average of several weeks in rural areas.

“At first, only a few companies came on board, offering the right products and syncing with our tech platform to support rural India. But when we started delivering — our number of policies issued increased, ensured a higher persistency ratio (high rate of policy/Institution retention) and enabled faster claim cycles — they started approaching the startup,” the CEO said. 

How Finhaat Is Solving India’s Financial Pain Points

 

When asked about rural customisation, the founding team cited parametric and climate-based insurance solutions. Unlike traditional indemnity insurance, which reimburses losses based on assessed damage, parametric insurance pays out when a predefined occurrence (think of a natural disaster like a flood, a cyclone or a heatwave causing drought) takes place, irrespective of actual losses. This approach benefits cultivators or farmers investing in cattle, poultry, or other livestock. Additionally, microinsurance provides affordable coverage for various risks, both life and non-life.

Nevertheless, 70% of its insurance revenue comes from curated  products — tied to loans or agri services — while 15% comes from retail and the rest from niche agricultural offerings like parametric and livestock insurance.

As of now, Finhaat runs three verticals — insurance, wealth management and wellness (currently offers diagnostics and teleconsultations) — and has developed the following products:  

FinSAAS for institutional insurance partners: The startup’s flagship product works like a full-stack or plug-and-play format, allowing insurance companies (ICs) to offer curated products through their existing networks and manage customer support. A suite of custom-built APIs enables easy integration with institutional partners for instant policy issuance and rapid claim processing, driving greater insurance adoption at the grassroots. Additionally, institution partners can opt for specific services such as institutional dashboards and organisational mapping to display information for end users and track trends.  

FinPRO for PoSPs/retail agents: This SaaS module is for individual insurance partners to transform how insurance is sold and managed across India. The fully digital solution streamlines the entire process, from onboarding to claims, helping agents to serve end customers more efficiently. 

Finhaat Wealth: The wealth management app and website provide curated solutions spanning mutual funds, NPS and other SEBI-regulated products to aspirational but underserved consumers from Tier III and IV locations. Finhaat also trains and equips a new set of wealth distributors (essentially, micro-entrepreneurs) to assist India’s emerging investor class. 

“Wealth creation in rural India is still a novel concept for most,” said Singh. “Our goal is to make it accessible and relevant, using reliable human touchpoints powered by strong technology. All our products and verticals follow a unified philosophy centred on suvidha (convenience), suraksha (security) and samriddhi (prosperity).”

What Will Fuel The Next Phase Of Growth At Finhaat

Finhaat is eyeing expansion when India’s rural financial services market is transforming rapidly. Government-backed schemes have laid the groundwork for insurance awareness, and the country is estimated to become the fastest-growing insurance market among the G20 nations in the next five years.

More importantly, unlike its peers, which often try to retrofit urban solutions for rural India, the platform has designed its offerings solely for the local context. What sets it apart is this solution-first and infrastructure-driven mindset. Rather than becoming another direct-to-consumer (D2C) insurance seller, it aspires to be the digital backbone for rural financial services, much like what UPI became for digital payments.

Finhaat expects to close FY26 with INR 250 Cr in gross written premium (GWP) and clock around INR 50 Cr in revenue. It is also looking to scale the newly launched wealth management vertical, with plans to onboard more than 1K partners and surpass INR 100 Cr in assets under management within a year. 

Speaking to Inc42, Singh said that the insurance arm would soon be chasing a GWP of INR 350 Cr, with a strong focus on agriculture. “We have insured more than 8 Mn lives, and now we are focusing on building capabilities around cattle, parametric and climate-based solutions for rural customers.”

Although agri-focussed insurance products will continue to anchor Finhaat’s portfolio, it also plans to target micro, small and medium enterprises and life and health policies to drive revenue. However, the endgame lies in empowering rural communities with the tools to cover risks, build wealth and define their financial future — nurturing financial inclusion and dignity. 

Meanwhile, the rural financial market across India remains fragmented and underpenetrated, but its need is undeniable. If Finhaat can keep delivering context-driven, tech-enabled products with trusted human touchpoints, it could become a vital cog in India’s inclusive financial infrastructure.