Ayushman Bharat and Ola sign pact to provide health insurance for driver partners

In a bid to facilitate comprehensive health insurance for Ola’s 2 million driver-partners, Ola and Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) have recently entered into a partnership. Vijay Ghadge, Vice President-Operations, Ola, signed an MoU with Praveen Gedam, Deputy CEO of AB-PMJAY and National Health Authority to extend the benefits of the Centre-sponsored healthcare scheme to provide secondary and tertiary care to driver-partners and their families. A representative from Common Service Centres (CSC), Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, also signed the pact in the capacity of a third-party administrator. Launched in September last year, AB-PMJAY provides 10.74 crore economically backwards and vulnerable families in India with hospitalization benefits through a health cover of Rs. 5 lakh in government and empanelled private hospitals. As a part of the partnership, the two organizations will work in tandem to identify driver-partners eligible for the scheme and provide them with access to benefits under the PM-JAY scheme. Through this collaboration, hundreds of thousands of eligible driver-partners will be able to access in-patient care for serious illnesses at a country-wide network of 18,073 government and private hospitals empanelled under PM-JAY. Driver-partners can get their AB-PMJAY e-cards issued at the nearest Ola office. This milestone development follows a series of benefits Ola has extended to its driver-partners towards their financial inclusion, including access to credit, tailored financial products and subsidized insurance and interest rates for their personal and professional needs. The first phase will see Ola and AB-PMJAY conduct a pilot in Delhi NCR, which will subsequently be rolled out at scale to other cities across the country. Eligible driver-partners as well as Ola employees, across verticals, will be able to avail the benefits of the program and obtain an Ayushman Bharat card at Rs. 30. Officials from the National Health Authority will work closely with the concerned department at Ola to carry out efficient handling of the process from checking eligibility to handing out AB-PMJAY e-cards. They will also train Ola staff to execute the process independently.