Founder or CEO · roughly 20 to 200 people
You started this to look after people. Then the TPA started calling.
Last reviewed:
At this size there is no benefits function, so you are it. The policy was bought on a friendly quote, nobody read the exclusions, and the first person to find out what is actually in it will be a frightened family at a hospital billing desk. Usually on a weekend. Usually calling you.
This page is written for one chair. If it is not yours, start here instead.
20 minutes with a Growth Advisor. No obligation, and no quote pushed.
If this is your week
You are not afraid of the premium. You are afraid of the phone call. In a company of this size one badly handled hospitalisation is known to everyone by Monday, and the thing that breaks is not the budget, it is the promise you personally made when you hired them. That is a founder problem, and it is solved before the event rather than during it.
You built this place to look after people, and every crisis still finds its way to you.
What actually goes wrong
Three of these, in this order, are what founders admit to first. Not because they are the most severe, but because they are the ones already happening.
- You are the final escalation desk. Below a real HR function the eleven o’clock call is yours. It is the least defensible use of a founder’s attention and the hardest one to delegate, because the person calling trusts you specifically.
- A claim comes back cut, and everyone hears about it. Over four in ten claimants in India face rejection or partial approval (LocalCircles, 2026). At 300 people that is not a statistic, it is a name, and everyone in the office knows whose father is in the ICU.
- You cannot outspend the companies hiring your people. India now has 2,117 global capability centres employing 2.36 million professionals (NASSCOM and Zinnov, May 2026), and mid to senior roles made up 77% of their hiring in 2025, up from 63% in 2023 (EY GCC Pulse). Those are exactly the people you are trying to keep. You cannot win on cost to company. You can win on what happens on a bad day.
- What worked at 40 people quietly stops working at 200. Plan design, enrolment and communication each break at a different point on the way up, and nobody re-examines any of them until a renewal notice arrives.
- The covers your board will ask about before you do. The first serious customer contract, the first institutional round, the first data question. Directors and officers, professional indemnity and cyber tend to arrive as a document request with a deadline attached.
What we do first
Nothing here requires you to change insurer, and none of it starts with a quote.
- Read what you already hold. Not the brochure, the wording. Room rent, sub-limits, the treatments capped at a fraction of the bill, the waiting periods, the deductions you would only discover at discharge.
- Test it against the moments that actually arrive. A parent in the ICU. A maternity beyond the second child. A mental health referral. An accident that ends in disability rather than a hospital stay.
- Fix the gaps at placement, not at claim time. A clause negotiated before the policy is issued costs nothing. The same clause argued after a bill is issued costs a fortnight and a family’s peace of mind.
- Move the escalation desk. After go-live the calls come to our claims team first. You find out afterwards, in a summary, rather than at eleven at night.
If you would rather see the gaps yourself before speaking to anybody, the stress test takes ten minutes, needs no sign-up, and shows your score on screen instead of emailing it to you.
The cover that carries the weight at your size
Category level, insurer-agnostic. What is right for you depends on your workforce, and that is a conversation rather than a list.
| Cover | What it is really for | The question founders miss |
|---|---|---|
| Group health | Hospitalisation for employees and, where chosen, their family | Are parents in, and on what structure? It is the most appreciated addition and the biggest cost driver at the same time |
| Group personal accident | A lump sum on accidental death or disability, on duty or off | Is disability covered as seriously as death? Disability is the more common outcome and the more expensive one for a family |
| Group term life | A payment to the family if an employee dies in service, from any cause | How many people would need a medical test before they are covered? |
| Super top-up | An extra layer that starts once a threshold is crossed in a year | Whether it is cheaper to buy depth here than to raise the base cover for everyone |
| Cyber, D&O, professional indemnity | The covers a customer contract or an investor asks for | Whether the wording matches what the contract actually demands, rather than sharing its name |
What a policy pays always depends on its wording. Nothing on this page is an offer of cover or a recommendation of a specific policy.
Group health · Group personal accident · Group term life · Cyber · Directors & Officers
What it looks like when it works
Forty-five days after their son was born, his parents were told he needed hernia surgery. Then the claim came back denied. The insurer said a hernia this early was probably congenital, and congenital conditions were not covered. Probably. Our team asked them to prove it. For a week we pushed back, escalation by escalation, until the answer changed. The family received the full claim amount, at the exact moment they needed it.
A real claim, shared with the family’s consent. Past experience. Outcomes vary by policy and by case, and we promise the effort rather than the result.
The founder in that story did not make a single phone call. That is the entire proposition on this page.
Proof, in public
The number worth checking is the one we do not control. The reviews behind it usually name the Ethika person who handled the claim.
Much of the review writing is people thanking an Ethika person by name.
Bootstrapped from day one and profitable from year one, which is the quiet reason the client is the only party we answer to. No insurer above us, no investor behind us.
20 minutes with a Growth Advisor. No obligation.
Common questions
How small can we be and still buy group cover?
What does using a broker cost us?
We bought through an agent we like. Is this awkward?
Should we add parents?
Our renewal is months away. Too early to talk?
Twenty minutes, and you will know
Whether your cover would hold on the day it gets tested is a knowable thing, and finding out does not commit you to anything.
What happens when you talk to us
A 20-minute video call with a Growth Advisor. No obligation and no quote pushed. In that first call we usually look at:
- What your current policy does on the four or five moments most likely to arrive
- Who takes the escalation today, and what it is costing you in attention
- Whether parents, accident and life cover are sized sensibly for your workforce
- What we would take off your desk in the first ninety days
You will leave with an honest read on your current cover, and a straight answer on whether we can genuinely help, even if you never become a client.
20 minutes with a Growth Advisor. No obligation.
Not ready for a call? Stress-test your cover in ten minutes with no sign-up, or start with a workshop for founders and HR. Sitting in a different chair? See all six.
A note on this page. This page is general information about how cover and claims work for companies like yours. It is not insurance, legal, financial or tax advice, and nothing on it is an offer of cover. What is right for your company is determined through a conversation and the formal placement process. Outcomes on any claim depend on the individual policy terms.
Sources. Company figures are taken from Fixed Facts and are stated as published. Market figures are named with their source and year; no data published by a competing broker, benefits consultant or benefits platform is cited. Statutory positions are described in general terms, with thresholds and amounts held back for compliance review rather than published here.
Ethika Insurance Broking Pvt Ltd · IRDAI-licensed Direct Insurance Broker (Life & General), Certificate No. 574, licence dated 8 August 2016, valid till 7 August 2028 · CIN U66030TG2015PTC099365 · Principal Officer: Sandeep Mukka · Member, Insurance Brokers Association of India (IBAI). Insurance is the subject matter of solicitation.
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