India’s largest standalone retail health insurer Star Health and Allied Insurance expects its Home Health Care initiative to grow at least 50 per cent in utilisation in the next one year as this segment is witnessing significant traction.
Launched in 2024, the Home Health Care (HHC) segment provides prompt medical care to customers at their homes, enhancing accessibility and convenience, making the programme more customer-centric. This segment recorded around 600 per cent y-o-y growth in terms of customers in the first quarter this fiscal.
“We have had a very good response to this service, which is a completely cashless arrangement. In terms of absolute number, close to 50,000 consults that we could deliver under the HHC programme in the first quarter of the current financial year. It is an overall outreach that we have been able to do to our customers on this facility being available. The access and availability itself have been increased,” Star Health and Allied Insurance Chief Operating Officer Amitabh Jain told businessline.
Available across 300 cities, HHC offers at-home treatment for fever, infectious diseases, gastritis, gastroenteritis, respiratory infections and urinary tract infections (UTI), enabling early treatment and reducing avoidable hospital visits.
“Last year, around this time, we were in less than 200 cities under this programme. Now it’s available in 300 cities. Overall technology, the number of doctors’ availability, the level of service, all of that have increased further. We have actively marketed this with our distribution to reach out to our end customers,” Jain said, adding further expansion would depend on the availability of partners, who are specialist vendors. These specialist vendors provide home healthcare services in terms of nurses, necessary medical equipment and medicines.
Going forward, the health insurer aims to expand HHC further into tier-2 and tier-3 cities, strengthen digital capabilities and enhance healthcare partnerships to bring quality care closer to customers.
Star Health’s retail market share was 29 per cent in Q1 FY27 compared to 31 per cent in Q1 FY26, partly impacted by a share of long-term policies and consequent reporting implications on an N and 1/N basis. More than 95 per cent of its premium income currently comes from retail insurance. In the first quarter this fiscal, its retail health insurance premium grew around 19 per cent y-o-y.
“It is a conscious strategy to stay away from a particular segment of group insurance, which is the large corporates and the medium-size companies. We don’t find that there is viability in doing that business, because typically that business runs on a loss. In the SME segment we find that it works, and that is the space where we are operating in,” the chief operating officer said.
On the distribution front, the two biggest distribution channels from the fresh customer acquisitions point of view are agents and digital. Overall, around 90 per cent of the insurer’s premium income comes from the agency channel.
Published on August 16, 2026