On the evening of 6 March 2026 — the first day of the NHCX Innovation Meet at IIT Hyderabad — I had the opportunity to speak with Dr. Sunil Kumar Barnwal, CEO of the National Health Authority, over dinner. I had already learned, the day before, that I had won first prize in the Ideathon track — a competition that asked participants to propose business use cases leveraging NHCX capabilities to solve real problems in India's health insurance ecosystem. The results had been announced on 5 March. The felicitation would come the next morning. But on that evening, between the knowing and the ceremony, something more important happened.
The conversation that evening went deeper than I had anticipated. We discussed the structural gap between what India's health insurance infrastructure confirms and what hospitals actually receive — and the cost that gap imposes on the system. It was a candid, substantive exchange — the kind that makes you realise the problem you have been working on is understood at the highest levels of the institution best positioned to address it.
I will not characterise Dr. Barnwal's views — those are his to share. What I can say is that the seriousness and depth of that conversation gave me something the Ideathon result alone could not: the conviction that hospitals in India should not be paying 20 percent or more to borrow against money they have already earned — and that the infrastructure to change this is closer than most people realise.
The prize had validated the concept. That evening gave me the confidence to build a company around it.
The next morning, on 7 March, I was felicitated on stage at the Innovation Meet alongside the other winners. But by then, the decision had already been made.
The Problem
India's health insurance ecosystem processed over ₹1.17 lakh crore in premiums in FY 2024–25, covering more than 58 crore lives. Health insurance is now the single largest segment within non-life insurance, contributing over 41 percent of gross direct premiums. The infrastructure that moves this data — NHCX, built under the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission — is one of the most ambitious digital public goods projects in Indian healthcare.
And yet, the cash does not follow the data.
When an insurer approves a hospital's claim, the obligation is confirmed. The amount is fixed. The date is set. But the actual transfer of funds to the hospital takes anywhere from 45 to 270 days. IRDAI mandates settlement within 30 days of complete documentation, with penal interest of 2 percent above bank rate for delays. In practice, especially for smaller hospitals and government scheme claims, the gap persists — and the cost of that gap is staggering.
An estimated ₹38,000 crore in approved claims sits as dead working capital at any given time. Hospitals — particularly the 85 percent that lack access to competitive formal credit — borrow against this trapped capital at 18 to 30 percent per annum from informal sources. For a mid-sized hospital doing ₹10 crore in insured revenue, the interest burden alone is ₹50–60 lakh per year. Not because the claims are in doubt. Not because the insurer has refused. Simply because the financial system has not yet been connected to the data that already proves these receivables are real.
This is not a credit quality problem. It is an infrastructure problem. And infrastructure problems have infrastructure solutions.
Why Now
Three things make this moment different from any that came before.
First, NHCX itself. India now has a government-built, FHIR-standard digital platform for health claims exchange that did not exist at scale three years ago. The data layer — verified identities, confirmed obligations, standardised adjudication trails — is operational.
Second, regulatory momentum. IRDAI's Master Circular on Health Insurance Business now mandates 3-hour cashless authorisation and 30-day settlement timelines. The regulator has signalled clearly that settlement delays are unacceptable. But mandates alone do not solve the cash flow problem for hospitals — the system needs a mechanism that converts approved claims into immediate liquidity.
Third, the NHCX Innovation Meet itself. The hackathon and ideathon — organised in collaboration with IRDAI, IIT Hyderabad, the General Insurance Council, Google, the National Resource Centre for EHR Standards, NABH, the Insurance Information Bureau, the India Insurtech Association, and NATHealth — drew over 112 submissions across five problem statements. The event was not a ceremonial exercise. It was a signal that NHA is actively seeking ecosystem innovation on top of NHCX. IRDAI Chairman Shri Ajay Seth and Joint Secretary and Mission Director (ABDM) Shri Kiran Gopal Vaska both attended and spoke. The institutional appetite is real.
The Conviction
I do not intend to lay out a product roadmap in a public article. What I will say is this.
iCReDS Solutions Private Limited has been incorporated with a single organising conviction: that the cost of healthcare financing in India can be brought down from 20 percent to 8 percent. Not through subsidies. Not through regulation alone. Through a market mechanism that connects the financial system to the verified data that India's health claims infrastructure already produces every day.
The NHCX Innovation Meet at IIT Hyderabad brought together over 112 teams, regulators, insurers, hospitals, and technology companies. It confirmed something I had suspected but needed to see firsthand: that the ecosystem is ready for this conversation.
The Ideathon result on 5 March told me the idea was worth pursuing. A conversation with the CEO of the National Health Authority on the evening of 6 March gave me the conviction to pursue it as a company. The felicitation on the morning of 7 March made it public. And the problem — ₹38,000 crore in trapped capital, 29,000 hospitals paying 20 percent interest on money they have already earned — gives me the urgency to move fast.
We are not ready to share what we are building. We are ready to share why.
If you work in healthcare, insurance, lending, regulation, or policy — and this problem matters to you — we would like to hear from you.