By Lancelot Joseph. Executive Editor, Business India

Employee benefits are a nightmare in India with all the stakeholders – employer, employee, and benefit providers – completely disconnected from each other. On the one hand, the employer struggles hard to co-ordinate and manage with multiple benefits providers while, on the other hand, employees do not have any idea what all benefits their employer is providing. 

“Even if an employee is aware of some benefits, accessing them is a painful process since all of it happens offline,” explains Sanchit Malik, co-founder, Pazcare. “Our app streamlines all these issues. The employees themselves can make customisations according to their needs on their mobile app. Through the dashboard provided, employees can manage their health benefits in a hassle-free manner,” he adds. “While running my last start-up called Townscript, I realised that it is difficult to provide employee benefits and insurance to your employees even if you had the budget and willingness. The large brokers would either not like to service you or it was a pain to manage unless you had a dedicated HR person looking into it”.

This was Malik’s inspiration in the initial days and he spoke to other small and medium business founders and employers. “I could clearly see everyone resonating with the issue,” he explains. “Furthermore, on talking to the employees, I realised that, even if they got some option, it was one solution that fits all, which was not used to them in most cases. A large percentage did not even know that their company had provided them with any such benefit.”

Founded in 2020 by entrepreneurs Malik (as CEO) and Manish Mishra (as CTO), Townscript was later acquired by Bookmyshow.  Mishra has been a core team member of start-ups, helping build scalable platforms from scratch. He has been former director, engineering at Mindtickle and Cleartax before starting Pazcare, which is a full-stack insure-tech and employee benefits platform. “On the one end, we help companies buy, enable and manage benefits (insurance, health, wellness, etc) for their employees on our web platform while, on the other hand, we enable employees to seamlessly access and customise the benefits available for them through our app,” points out Mishra.

Pazcare has a host of services, including insurance, for the health, personal accident and term life insurance of the group. In health and wellness – it has doctor consultations, mental wellness sessions, health check-ups, women wellness, medicines, ambulance services, fitness sessions and regular wellness sessions for employees. Its clients include Vedantu, MamaEarth, Mindtickle, Appknox, Goodera, Chaayos, Dunzo, Betterplace and Fareye, to name only some of the customers.

Through its tech platform, it has created a real-time user experience, which makes it easy for the employer as well as the employee to personalise and manage workplace benefits. Employers get a dashboard to buy, enable and manage insurance and health benefits. Each employee gets an app, making it convenient for him to use and upgrade these benefits as per his needs.