Alekhya

Providing a culture of care influences how we build products. Alekhya (@alexjay_7), our Head of Support, talks about how we make raising a claim easy for your team. #insurance

The best claims experience in the world: Claims NPS of 79. No other company comes even close. The customer obsession of @thesanerguy and @tanish2k is unmatched and this team's ability to leverage AI and technology to build 10x user experiences are unparalled.Incredibly excited to have @peakxv lead the series B of @getplumhq, from our 4th cohort of @_surgeahead. @gvravishankar

In insurance, the moment that matters most is the claim. That’s the moment Plum chose to rebuild from first principles. From reducing discharge times to minutes, to resolving the majority of claims without human intervention, they’ve quietly redefined what “good” looks like in employee healthcare. Now, with fresh capital and a profitable, cash-generating business, they’re just getting started. Congratulations Abhishek Poddar (@thesanerguy), Saurabh Arora (@tanish2k) and the entire Plum (@getplumhq) team. 🙌 Excited to double down as you build the future of employee benefits in India. 🚀 @gvravishankar

📢 We’re excited to share that we’ve just closed our Series B round, led by Peak XV Partners, after our first full year of profitability. This milestone is all in the service of one thing truly – to help us further scale what we believe is the most important part of insurance – the claims experience. For the last 6 years, we’ve been obsessed with improving the claims experience. Because we believe it's the moment that matters most for anyone who gets insurance. And after 6+ years and 500,000+ claims, we're at a claims NPS of 79. This round empowers us to deliver this experience to the next million Indians. We’re extremely grateful to our customers for trusting us to care for their teams, our investors (Peak XV, Tanglin, and GMO) for believing in our mission, and the 500-odd Plum-bers who’ve built this with relentless care. To know more - plumhq.com/claims

Running is now my identity, and I’m not ashamed of it. I want it to be my only identity. Not many know who and what I was into before getting into running. Only those who grew up or studied with me know me for the kind of guy I am, and they love me for sure. I’m literally the same even now, but it’s just that I run more and I talk about running more, plus I have a full-time job too. Before I got into running, I was a freak. I drank a lot, smoked even more. I’ve drunk in local bars, roadside, under a tree, gone to some pricey bars, did all the things that a typical college kid would do. I studied in Bangalore, did my bachelor’s and master’s, and finally in 2024 I got a job and worked as a customer support fellow in my favorite startup. I was earning decently and got great friends at work. I partied with my friends and sometimes with my colleagues, and eventually partied a lot, almost weekly, twice, sometimes three times a week. Every time it was about getting sloshed, nothing in between. I have been following “go hard or go super hard” even before it became my running philosophy. One random day I borrowed a cycle from my sister’s friend and thought of cycling. I always wanted to cycle. I did a few rides, but some idiot stole that cycle, and it was a 30k worth cycle, a Decathlon Rockrider. So I had to buy him a new cycle and shelled out ~34k on that. But here is the catch, what happened after that: I was staying in some shitty place in Mahadevpura, Whitefield, so I moved out from there to Kasturi Nagar, and my life changed from there on. It’s a diff neighborhood, but a lovely neighborhood. I was fully depressed for losing the cycle, but then I decided I was never going to cycle again ever, so I had to do something. I saw a random post on X, back then Twitter, on my timeline by @thottuvai that he was starting @cubbon_run . So I said, now that my dream of cycling is gone, the only thing I can afford is running, that is free, and I had one old pair of random running shoes I got for office wear. So I registered for 5k with Cubbon Run and ACTUALLY showed up for the run. So I started running in the first week of August 2023 with Cubbon. I did my first 5k in around 35:14. I was grasping for breath, died twice, cried thrice during the run, but somehow finished it. Somehow I loved the pain in it. Maybe it was the pain of losing 30k that I paid for the stolen cycle, or the pain that was bound to happen for the smoking and drinking that I had done, but I loved that pain. Then I showed up for the next run on the next Sunday and then slowly started running on weekdays, like 2–3 km, in the new area, which is an absolutely beautiful place to run. Then, the next month during the Dussehra holidays, I went home to my native, Yadgir. There I did a couple of short runs and then did my first ever 10 km in 1 hour 8 minutes or so, and I loved it. Mind you, I was still smoking then. Weeks passed and months passed. Slowly I started increasing my speed, and on 8th December I did a 10k in 53 minutes, and then did my first half marathon on 25th December 2023 under 1:58. Now I was addicted to this pain. It was not for losing the cycle, but for the sheer love of the sport. Then one random day I decided to introduce my now close friend, then decent friend and colleague, @ParthaPC42 , to running, and I took him to Cubbon Run. Mind you, that lad was and is an animal, bigger than me. He did his first 5k, he was not able to breathe, but he got hooked to running, started showing up to runs with me. We did many runs together and in between met nice souls from Cubbon Run like @shardul_sil , @rounakdatta12 , and many more folks like @ektasawant77 and Shreyas, who are now really nice friends with me Three months down the line, now Partha was doing weekly 50+ kms of running, regular to the gym, and got addicted to running. Meanwhile, I was running but still smoking and drinking occasionally and was partying here and there. One day Partha said, let’s go to Kanteerava to do an all-out 10k. I said sure, and we reached there late evening and started warming up, and then started to run an all-out 10k. Partha did 42 minutes and I barely made it to 46 minutes. Something inside me was hurt that day very badly. How can someone whom I introduced to running run faster than me? I realized it was my lungs and my habits. So I went home and smoked a few more cigarettes late night on the street, and then threw myself a promise on that very same day, which was 6th July 2024, that I wouldn’t touch it anymore until I smoked him again. I never did till today, and it’s been 18 months so far. But very importantly, after that run, another day I decided to go and register for a full marathon in Pune Marathon AFMC, a hell route with huge elevations in August 2024. We finished our first ever full marathon. I did a 3:58 marathon and Partha did 4 hours. I cried after the marathon for two reasons: one, it was the toughest thing I did in my life; second, I felt liberation, and for the first time in my life I was super proud of myself. Nothing till date comes close to that feeling. During the preparation, I pinged @jayshreeanand because she was the only one who was regularly doing long runs. I met her in a Thindi Run that @ajit_bhaskar was hosting, and after the run I pinged her for company during long runs. Instead of blocking me as a creep, she said let’s go, and I was super happy to find a fellow runner who was doing a full, and that helped me cross my first marathon under 4 hours. Months passed. I got hooked to running. During the Pune run, Partha was hurt and got injured, so now it was only me from here. So I started running more with Jayshree, and she then introduced me to many friends, and now all are mutual. If you are reading this, you will most likely be one of them. Eventually, I went on to do a sub-90-minute half marathon and a 3:13 full marathon in February 2025, and I am now onto a sub-2:58 goal. After reading this, if you have to come to one conclusion, it is this: running changed me for good. I don’t smoke, the BIGGEST achievement in my life. I don’t do alcohol much. I sleep on time, wake up early in the morning to run, eat nice food. So yes, running changed my life, and I’m not ashamed of it.