Imitation Games: Coverfox Vs Policybazaar [Vol. 2]
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Policybazaar copies yet another initiative from Coverfox, and pretty much everything related to it.
Founded in 2008, Policybazaar is an online insurance aggregator based out of India. Coverfox.com is a four year old online insurance broker based out of India which operates in a competing space.
For full disclosure - I’m one of the founding team members of Coverfox.
If you’ve read my earlier post Imitation Games: Coverfox vs Policybazaar [Vol 1] you would know that Policybazaar has a history of copying stuff from Coverfox (and I have a history of reporting it :)
Policybazaar is a giant in online insurance space. Being a challenger, we constantly innovate on Design, Product, Processes and Customer Service to stand-out and present ourselves as a better alternative.
When we started our journey, tech and design of all our rivals resembled the Yahoo! and AOL of 90s. I’m not exaggerating. Without naming names, try out buying insurance from some of insurance websites even today. You’ll test the thresholds of your patience.
Policybazaar went out and not just copied our design right down to the pixel, but also, copied our product messaging right down to the typo errors we had made.
The next step for us, was to innovate on processes and redefine customer delight in the insurance space. To do just that we launched ‘Express Claims @ Coverfox’ back in 2016.
Express Claims is a service that provides 3-day guarantee to get your car back on the road, if you filed a claim against your Car Insurance through us. We even laid out how the process works in our Express Claims page:
It was a one-of-a-kind initiative to make the claims process as easy as possible for our customers, till a second one came along by (no points for guessing) Policybazaar — Insta Claims. Yes, they call it “Insta Claims” which *cough cough* is in no manner inspired by “Express Claims”. Or so they would claim (pun-intended).
What is “Insta Claims” service by Policybazaar and how does it work?
Go ahead and take a moment to scroll back up and compare the points mentioned in “Express Claims” and “Insta Claims” processes.
It reads like an intern was given a thesaurus and 15 minutes time to come up with the copy of Insta Claims page, after looking at the Express claims one.
Not convinced? Let’s look at the FAQs
Coverfox FAQs:
Let’s play “spot the difference”:
So, is this post just to rant about some guy copying the competitor?
Yes, and No.
Here’s an hypothetical situation that puts in context the way we feel -
You are writing an exam and the guy next to you is trying to cheat from you. You try your best not to let him copy your answers. You back yourself thinking — “I have studied hard. I will get better results.”
But the guy next to you has a reputation of being a topper. He has always copied from others, but the teachers think he is a good guy. Worse — when the teachers evaluate your answer-sheets, they think — you are the one who has copied from him.
How does that make you feel?
Sucks, right? That’s how it makes us feel. That’s how it makes me feel. And so I rant on posts like this.
But a rant doesn’t mean we are sitting tight, and will just bitch and moan. Running a business is not easy. Growing a firm and taking on giants with buck loads of money is not easy. We knew what we were getting into when we started. We didn’t expect a level playing field. But we didn’t expect our competition to be a shameless rip-off either.
The only silver lining?
We are not done yet. We are not that small a brand as we were when I wrote the last post. More and more people are trusting us with their insurance. We are the fastest growing online insurance platform in India.
We’ll keep on innovating and leading the front — when it comes to setting Design, Product, Tech, Marketing and Customer Success standards which our competition will be forced to follow.
And as long as we stay ahead of the curve — we will win.
