Zuno General Insurance, backed by Edelweiss Group, closed FY25 with a gross premium of around ₹1,000 crore. Managing director and CEO Shanai Ghosh tells Narayanan V about the insurer’s roadmap to break even, how it is approaching the regulator’s expense of management norms and the role of a carefully-chosen product mix in driving growth. Excerpts:
How was your growth in the previous fiscal?
We ended FY25 with ₹992 crore in GDPI (gross direct premium income). The GDPI growth rate was 19%, against the industry growth of 6%. We will continue to maintain a trajectory of 2.5 to 3 times the industry growth rate in FY26. Even if industry growth moderates, our trajectory remains unchanged. Therefore, we expect a healthy growth rate of 25%–30%, placing our premium target at around ₹1,250 crore this fiscal. Breaking even will be a major milestone for us and we have set a target to achieve it in FY27.
Where do you stand in terms of Irdai’s expenses of management (EoM) guidelines?
We started our operations in 2018, so we are still above the EoM threshold of 30%, which is typically the case for new insurers. We have been among the fastest-growing general insurers over the last three-five years. Since we are an asset-light, tech-first company, our fixed costs are under control. Legacy companies, because of their size, have room within their EoM to pay higher commissions and acquire government business. New players like us can’t compete on an equal footing. So, we are making changes to our product mix to ensure that we stay within EoM limits. That said, we have a clear glide path and are actively working to bring our EoM within regulatory limits.
Your product mix is extremely tilted towards motor insurance.
That’s right. Motor currently accounts for about 58% of our portfolio. When we started Zuno in 2018, we identified three key gaps in the industry ―innovation, experience and efficiency ― and decided to build our business around those pillars. So, whenever we consider entering a product segment, we evaluate it against these parameters. Motor and health clearly align with them. We began with motor and built that out first. A year or two later, we entered health insurance, initially focusing on group health as it offers scale and faster learning at a lower cost. Now, we’ve started building other lines of business. Over the next three-four years, we expect motor to settle at around 40–45%, health to contribute 35–40%, and the remaining 15–20% to come from segments like commercial. The shift is deliberate, as we aim to diversify and scale across multiple lines.
Vehicle sales are projected to be subdued this year. How will it impact your growth?
We are part of the industry, so I can’t say we’ll grow irrespective of what happens in the broader market. For instance, in the last fiscal, motor insurance industry premiums grew in single digits, but that segment grew over 40% for us. Similarly, in property insurance, the industry saw a negative growth ― pricing came down sharply due to intense competition and irrational pricing. We still maintained a 20–25% growth in that challenging market. So, we’re confident that we can continue growing at 2.5 to 3 times the industry rate, despite any slowdown in core segments.