With an aim to ease the financial burden of medical treatment on the economically weaker sections (EWS) of the society, Arogya Finance, a social healthcare venture, has launched Arogya Card in Mumbai with the facility of a pre-approved loan of up to Rs.2 lakh. Anyone with a monthly income of or below Rs.7500 can avail the facility.
“Unexpected healthcare shocks are leading over 40 million Indians to poverty every year. Arogya Finance has taken a step to bridge this gap by launching the Arogya Card that offers pre-approved loans at reasonable terms by making it available at the right time and place of need to those who lack collateral or formal income proof,” said Jose Peter, Co-founder and CEO of Arogya Finance. He described the facility as a one-stop financial solution for people in need whenever and wherever there is an unforeseen medical emergency.
The Arogya card does not require collaterals or formal income proof which is mandatory in other forms of financial assistance. Arogya Finance offers a pre-approved loan and makes it easily available within 24 hours.
The card offers medical loans to the traditionally un-bankable, using psychometric tests as an innovative risk assessment tool, which enables evaluation of the credit risk profile of people outside the formal banking system.
The borrowers can repay the loans in easy monthly instalments of up to 36 months and is calculated in a way that it does not exceed 25 per cent of the total family income.
Dheeraj Batra, Co-founder and VP of Business Development at Arogya Finance said, “with the launch of the Arogya Card, we are creating a lifeline of people in India facing poverty due to ti high expenses incurred on healthcare.
Our Cumulative Collection Ratio is very high at 96 per cent and shows the robustness of our methodology”. Arogya Finance has been recognised as one of India’s most unique social innovators by International Partnership for Innovative Healthcare Delivery (IPIHD), an organization founded by McKinsey, USAID and the World Economic Forum and Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (SEAD). With over 100 healthcare delivery partners and presence in 9 states, Arogya plans to implement the concept of Arogya Card across the nation.
Apart from Mumbai, the company is going to launch the card in other parts of cities as Delhi NCR, Ahmadabad, Kerala, Hyderabad, Maharashtra, Bangalore, Calicut, Pune and Coimbatore.
