Health and wellness industry sees growing consumer demand

The growing demand for more comprehensive corporate wellbeing services was a subject for discussion at the recent Parima event in Mumbai.

Not only are consumers more aware of their health benefits, they are also becoming more proactive in their demands.

A panel comprising Shruti Oke, head of product management at Tata AIA Life, Rajiv Aggarwal, MMB India leader, digital healthcare strategy and partnerships, and Soni Srivastava, director and head of corporate insurance for APAC for Deutsche Bank, and a Parima director, discussed the developments.

According to Oke, a rise in disposable income across all age gaps as well as various private and public sector efforts to raise awareness on the importance of health and wellness have helped to boost the consumer demand.

There has also been a government effort to digitise health care services across India. In turn, the rise in demand has led to a growing number of start-ups in the sector.

The panel also touched on one of the most pressing health issues for corporates across the world – the prevalence of non-communicable diseases such as obesity and cancer, and the potential for them to be the world’s next pandemic.

Aggarwal highlighted the high frequency of these diseases among large organisations and stressed the importance of preventive healthcare.

He emphasised that insurance alone cannot solve these issues and that businesses need to focus on identifying potential risks in their workforce and promoting preventive measures to manage non-communicable diseases effectively.

The panel addressed a question about scaling up healthcare capacities in India. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the limited capacity across the country and companies have since taken various steps to ensure they have sufficient capacity to cover their healthcare needs.

The panel also highlighted the role that health insurance can play in boosting capacity, especially if individuals can get early insurance coverage given that most policies will not cover certain existing illnesses.