He left his 20 year job in insurance
Five months later, they became his first customer.
Hi there,
This week we’re covering the following:
The insurance model where claims get paid in one day (and why it’s a $56B opportunity)
How a $6 (₹600) policy pays $53 (₹5,000) the next day with zero paperwork
Why insurance companies actually make more money when they pay claims faster
Why Bajaj General Insurance signed up as their first customer within five months
What to watch for when evaluating early-stage insurtech startups
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He couldn’t watch farmers & workers struggle anymore. Now his platform settles insurance claims in one day.
For 20 years, Anupam Shrey worked inside India’s insurance industry. First at ICICI Lombard. Then at Bajaj Allianz.
His job was selling climate protection to farmers, gig workers, and small businesses.
He did his job well. But he couldn’t control what happened after the sale.
Every monsoon, the same cycle repeated. A farmer would buy a policy. The rains would destroy the crop. The farmer would file a claim.
And then wait one to two months. Sometimes the money never came.
It wasn’t just farmers.
Delivery drivers during heatwaves.
Construction workers when sites were flooded.
Retail shop owners after unseasonal rain.
These are everyday workers who earn ₹500 to ₹1,000 a day. Losing three days of income with no safety net is devastating.
In Anupam’s words: “At the time of need, we are not providing the settlement to the farmers or to the workers.”
Eventually, he left. He pulled his co-founder Suman out of the same industry.
He called his engineering college friend Ankur, who is a cofounder too and had 15 years in banking tech. The three of them put in their own money, took personal debt, and started building.
Five months later, they had a live product. Their first customer was Bajaj General Insurance.
The same company Anupam had just left. Their startup is Plutas.ai.
What is parametric insurance, and why should investors care?
I had never heard this before, that’s why I thought I should explain this in simple terms to you.
Between 2019 and 2023, weather disasters caused $56 billion in losses across India.
Most of it was uninsured. Traditional insurance does not work for a $32 loss (₹3,000). The paperwork and adjuster process costs more in time than the payout is worth.
Parametric insurance flips this.
There is no claim form, no adjustments, no waiting.
The payout is triggered automatically by data.
If rainfall at your pincode crosses 128 mm for three consecutive days, you get paid the next day. If the temperature crosses 42 degrees, you get paid.
The weather station confirms it happened, and money hits your account within 24 hours.
A delivery driver buys a policy for $6 (₹600). The trigger hits. He gets $53 (₹5,000) the next day. He didn’t call anyone or fill out a form. That is parametric insurance.
Plutas built the platform that makes all of this possible.
A customer selects their location and a date range.
Plutas’s AI engine pulls 30 years of historical weather data from the India Meteorological Department and ERA5 satellite data.
It calculates the exact trigger threshold for that pincode.
The customer sees the premium, the coverage, and the exact payout conditions. They pay, and the policy is generated instantly.
If the weather event crosses the threshold, the claim is paid out automatically within one day.
The platform is cloud-based and API-driven, so any insurer can plug into it.
Current products with Bajaj include Daily HeatSafe, HeatSafe, Daily RainSafe, and Continuous RainSafe.
Plutas does not carry risk. Insurance companies do. Every new insurer on the platform multiplies the business without Plutas taking on risk.
If claims get paid faster, don’t insurers lose money?
I had this doubt in my mind: in traditional insurance, fewer claims mean more profit. But parametric insurance runs on completely different economics.
Premiums are tiny, usually $6 to $13 (₹600 to ₹1,200). Payouts are small, usually $53 to $527 (₹5,000 to ₹50,000).
The AI pricing engine uses 30 years of weather data to calculate the exact probability of a trigger event at each location.
Expected claims are already baked into the price. The insurer profits on volume.
Fast claims are actually what makes the product sellable. Parametric insurance never scaled before because customers didn’t trust it.
By settling every claim within one day, Plutas removes the trust barrier. More trust means more customers, which means more revenue.
Plutus has generated ₹25 lakh ( $30K) in additional revenue for Bajaj in the last financial year.
This is revenue that Bajaj would never have earned without the platform. The insurer didn’t lose money. They made new money from a customer segment they could never reach before.
The team behind Plutas.
Anupam Shrey started at ICICI Lombard and worked at Bajaj Allianz for years, selling parametric insurance across India. He translated two decades of on-the-ground insurance experience into Plutas’s product logic and underwriting rules.
Suman worked alongside Anupam in insurance for nearly 20 years. They sold the same products, hit the same walls, and eventually left together to build the solution. He leads insurance operations and distribution.
Ankur was Anupam’s classmate from engineering college. 15 years building technology in banking. Anupam convinced him to leave his corporate career and join as co-founder. He built the entire platform, from AI underwriting to automated claims, in under five months.
Together, roughly 55 years of combined experience across insurance and banking technology.
They bootstrapped with personal funds and debt before raising any external capital.
When we asked Anupam about his proudest moment, he didn’t mention the Bajaj partnership or the Tokyo award. He said:
Converting 20 years of theoretical parametric insurance knowledge into a working technology platform. The theory became the product.
Where they stand today?
Live with Bajaj General Insurance since Q3 2025. Product branded as Bajaj Allianz ClimateSafe across West Bengal, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and Tamil Nadu.
34,937+ policies issued
Thousands of claims with automated payout in same day
$120K revenue last financial year
99.8% platform uptime
Gig workers are 59% of policies. Bootstrapped by founders plus ₹1 crore ($120K) from a Sweden-based family office.
Now raising a seed round. In active expansion talks in the UK and Japan.
GVP Take
I wanted to feature Plutas for a specific reason. The founder-market fit is unusually deep.
1. Anupam sold parametric insurance for 20 years, watched it fail, and built the fix.
His former employer became his first customer.
2. The business model works for everyone. Insurers get new revenue from an unreachable customer segment. Customers get affordable protection with payouts they trust.
3. Plutas earns a SaaS fee without carrying risk. Every new insurer on the platform multiplies the business.
The main risk is the early stage with one insurance partner.
But the core thesis is simple: climate losses are growing, the people affected most have the least protection, and insurers need the technology to serve them. Plutas built it, and the numbers show it works.
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See you next week
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Email: jaylee@globalventureplay.com