A story for the account books

Building and growing B2B companies in and for India isn’t easy. This is doubly challenging if you’re focusing on MSMEs in Tier-2 cities.

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At Plum, we constantly learn from global giants about marketing, team-building, culture, and more. However, we also draw inspiration from Indian companies that have embarked on similar journeys as ours, and built strong foundations and grown successfully. It takes incredible clarity, attention to detail, ambition, and prudence to achieve this for MSMEs in India, and scale efficiently.

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No one knows this better than Khatabook. 

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Building this requires all the aforementioned values and a remarkable focus on nurturing and growing high-quality talent.

A culture of resilience

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It would be remiss to write about Khatabook’s approach to employee benefits without addressing their approach to talent. In our conversation with Swapna Nair, Khatabook’s Head of People, one common theme stood out – their fixation on hiring and nurturing people.

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“We index very heavily on hiring the right talent and ensuring they have a great time here. Every specific thing added to Khatabook’s policies and practices is to create an environment where talent thrives.”

– Swapna Nair, Khatabook 

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Easier said than done. 

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Thanks to market conditions, and the Indian startup ecosystem’s relatively austere mindset, Khatabook have been extremely prudent with their investments over the last few years. However, with constraints comes creativity – not only has Khatabook been thoughtful, but they’ve also crafted their playbook for talent retention in an era of resilience.

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Some examples:

• All employees are part of Khatabook’s ESOP pool. In addition, top performers (and teams working on critical projects) are rewarded through accelerated vesting schedules. 
• Khatabook’s period of prudence is punctuated by persistent pulse checks – no major change in policy or practice went through without the team’s tacit approval. 

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This extended to employee health. Khatabook never allowed budget constraints influence their approach to their benefits stack. In fact, they only enhanced the quality of coverage every passing year.

How Plum and Khatabook ensured a comprehensive policy despite budget constraints

While economist Thomas Sowell was not thinking about employee benefits when he said ‘there are no solutions, only trade offs’, it’s relevant to this story.

Khatabook’s constraints meant they couldn’t go above and beyond with their benefits. This meant they had to be very judicious about the impact their benefits stack had on their team’s health outcomes.

Here are three specific conundrums where our partnership helped Khatabook match their intent to action. 

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Insufficient maternity cover with add-ons vs sufficient maternity cover without add-ons.

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Khatabook offered a maternity cover of INR 75,000 with additional benefits like pre and post natal covers, etc.

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This wasn’t ideal for two reasons: 

• Most maternity claims in Indian cities cross INR 1,00,000 – thus making a INR 75,000 cover insufficient. 
• The additional benefits weren’t effective either, because they could not be claimed if a claim exhausted the original INR 75,000 cover, a rather common occurrence.

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Khatabook solved this by increasing the maternity cover to INR 1,00,000 while keeping essential add-ons like infertility treatments and surrogate mother expenses. At the very least, this would ensure fewer rejections and exhaustion of the sum insured, while giving them room to include add-ons during the next renewal.

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Inclusive doesn’t have to mean expensive

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Contrary to popular belief, inclusive benefits do not make a policy more expensive than the average employee benefits plan.

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Some inexpensive, yet significant enhancements: 

• LGBTQ+ benefits – including coverage for same-sex and live-in partners 
• Maternity cover extending to the surrogate mother 
• IPD and OPD coverage for ailments like autism, up to sum insured

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Not only did this help Khatabook make significant steps towards meeting their inclusion goals, but also put them in the top 5%ile of companies offering inclusive benefits.

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The term-life tradeoff

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Companies typically offer a term life and personal accident plan in addition to health insurance. Constraints meant Khatabook could offer only one of the two policies. 

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After brainstorming with our consultants, Khatabook chose crafting a term life plan, because a term life policy would cover death by accident in addition to other causes, making coverage relatively more comprehensive. 

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The resulting benefits stack has been effective – Khatabook’s employees have a Claims Satisfaction Score of 83 – with employees commending the smooth cashless experience, the app, and our support team’s communication among

other things.

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“Our policy this year was about stepping back and looking at our benefits to identify which ones had the maximum impact. Not only did we approach it from our lens, but also after having multiple conversations to understand how our team was thinking about this. Plum’s consultative approach helped us craft a benefits plan that ticked both boxes, and we’re extremely proud of our policy.”

– Swapna Nair, Khatabook

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Khatabook and the 2% Club

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Khatabook’s current policy puts them in India’s top ten percentile when it comes to employee health benefits.

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A detailed snapshot: 

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Everyone’s a great employer during a bull market. But legacies are built by companies standing by their principles amidst the choppiest seas. Khatabook’s legacy is that they built an extremely successful business for India SMB, it’s that they nurtured the talent and built it – despite all the constraints.  

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And for that reason alone, they’re part of The 2% Club, our exclusive community of the country’s best employers.  

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We’re proud to be associated with talent-first companies like Khatabook, WeWork, and Postman – long may their tribe grow.