India Inc is increasingly supplementing basic insurance coverage for employees with wider benefits such as preventive check-ups, telehealth, gym memberships and mental health services, and this is facilitating better health and well-being outcomes for their employees, showed a new research.
Companies that have invested in healthcare benefits have seen nearly a 13 per cent reduction in incidence of chronic claims, according to a recent analysis by digital-first insurance platform Plum. The lower claim incidence can translate to premium savings of as much as ₹480 per employee during renewal of insurance plans, it added.
This is the fourth edition of Plum’s annual State of Employee Benefits report based on data from over 6,000 companies and 1 million employees.
The positive correlation comes at a time when the share of Indian employers offering healthcare benefits has been increasing. Plum’s data suggests that 23 per cent of analysed companies in FY26 combine insurance with preventive healthcare, up from 14 per cent last year and 5 per cent in FY23.
Indian organisations are beginning to take the right steps towards investment in the health and financial protection of their employees, said Abhishek Poddar, CEO, Plum. “What used to be the top quartile of benefits in 2024 has now become the median of benefits. I think that is the signal that these investments have gone from perceived surplus to bare minimum with organisations.”
Plum’s analysis showed that companies offering sum insured over ₹5 lakh has increased 53 per cent while those offering a maternity limit above ₹75,000 has increased 155 per cent. Companies adding term life and personal accidents have increased 179 per cent.
With changing landscape of work and new generation of employees, mental health benefits are now also a key part of these offerings.
Mental health-related benefits and services are offered by over a third of the companies surveyed overall. This is at 52 per cent for MNCs, 39 per cent for funded start-ups and 11 per cent for local Indian firms.
The analysis also showed that, for the average company, the number of healthcare benefits offered in addition to insurance has increased from just one in FY23 to three in FY26, while the share of employee benefits spent has quadrupled during the period
The degree of growth varies depending on the size and type of the company.
International companies do far better than their Indian peers when it comes to offering holistic benefits, said Shreyas Achar, Chief Marketing Officer, Plum. Within Indian companies, a similar gulf exists between start-ups with venture-capital backing and local bootstrapped businesses.
Overall, an international company’s median spend per employee is about 1.6x a funded start-up and nearly 3x a bootstrapped Indian organisation, the report showed.
Interestingly, the report also showed that for start-ups, every new funding round results in a bump in quality of employee benefits.
Despite the increase in benefits, the report also highlighted that the overall burden of chronic illnesses among Indian employees is increasing with the financial strain for issues like cancer, heart and kidney disease and musculoskeletal conditions having jumped by 2.5-3.5 times.
Published on September 28, 2026
