So, someone comes and picks your wallet while travelling on the Mumbai local. You figure there wasn't much cash in your wallet anyway. However, your day takes a turn for the worse when you start calling up the bank to block your cards, download forms to re-apply for a new PAN card, try to persuade the police to lodge an FIR for the driving license. At this point you would give anything to let someone else do all the formalities and handle the situation. This is where OneAssist comes in.
Gagan Maini and Subrat Pani came up with the idea of OneAssist in June 2011 after years of working in the payment industry. By July 2012, OneAssist had gone live. With $3.5 million (Rs 19.93 crore) investments from Sequoia Capital and Light Speed Advisory Services, OneAssist hopes to be an ubiquitous platform for assistance and protection programs across different verticals.
The first few products from the OneAssist stable - WalletAssist, MobileAssist, EverydayAssist and TripAssist - are designed to help anyone who has lost his mobile phone, credit and debit cards, KYC documents and financial documents, passport, or other important documents. For example in the event of loss of a mobile handset, a member will only need to make one call to OneAssist to block the SIM and Phone, delete all data from the smart phone (photo, files & contacts) and also switch on a remote alarm on the handset. What helps is that the technology platform used by OneAssist is independent of the operating system or telecom service providers. Similarly, WalletAssist will help in blocking all the bank cards also helping in replacing important documents such as driving license and PAN card.
Says Randeep Singh from Mumbai: "Losing a handset on the way to a meeting was a nightmare. Thankfully, I had activated my MobileAssist membership a couple of days back and they sent me a temporary handset within six hours. At least I had a phone to operate on which helped me tremendously."
The concern on anyone's mind at this point of time is whether the data shared by an individual will be safe with the company. Pani points out, "Product services are about protecting customers data. Data confidentiality, capacity and security is of the highest importance to us."
OneAssist is working towards an ISO 27001 and PCIDSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) certification. The company also keeps a data backup in Hyderabad, in case the data in Mumbai is somehow compromised. As an added measure, the registration requires members to give away only the minimum requirements, thereby reducing risks of information sharing.
"Our target audience is anyone with a smart phone or with a credit or debit card," says Subrat Pani, Co-founder and Director, OneAssist. With around 27 million smart phone users in Urban India (according to a survey by Neilsen and Informate), the member-base could increase manifold in a short while.
Most of OneAssist's products come with a choice of Power membership or Privilege membership. The cost of the products varies from Rs 599 to Rs 2,199 a year. This covers up to Rs 80,000 domestic credit they will give you in case you lose your cards during a trip, or a Rs 2 lakh fraud cover, or a mobile phone. These are emergency aids on a repayable basis. The company plans to break even by 2015, if things go as planned.
However, to achieve this kind of customer base, marketing must be done aggressively. OneAssist relies on a B2B2C to reach its target audience. They have already partnered with HDFC Bank to offer wallet and mobile protection and plan to have more such partnerships in the future. The basic aim right now is to build awareness of the services and products through partnerships on a revenue-sharing basis. Pani plans to use social and digital media parallely for this purpose.
Though the products as of now are in their initial stages, the company hopes to expand into more spaces such as medical assistance or assistance in the event of breakdown of any gadget. What remains to be seen is how soon can they achieve the customer base, especially since the market is huge and virtually untapped.
