Escorts enters online insurance with escolife.com

NEW DELHI: The Escorts Group has launched a portal called www.escolife.com,

targeted at the insurance segment. It promises to be a one-stop shop for all

associated with the insurance segment -- be it agents, end user or the insurance

companies. A brain-child of Ritu Nanda, wife of Escorts Group chairperson Rajan

Nanda, Escolife will be a company under the Esconet group of companies. The

company, which was started a year ago by Ritu Nanda, has seen an investment of

Rs 7.5 crore till date with a minor stake held by Ritu Nanda (17 per cent) and

the rest by Esconet. The investment is expected to further scale to Rs 10 crore

this fiscal.

Escolife has an offline presence in the form of training institutes for

insurance agents - the RNIS College of Insurance. Located in Delhi, Chandigarh,

Chennai, Mumbai and Bangalore, the college has been instrumental in churning out

more than 4,000 agents already. The online initiative is expected to take its

training foray a step further by offering online courses that are certified by

the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRADA).

Said Nanda, "Escolife provides a forum for insurance companies to

effectively communicate with agents and customers. To agents, the portal

provides a virtual office fully equipped with all the latest technological tools

and to the customers the portal offers a plethora of useful information from all

insurance companies."

Among the many features offered by the portal, the most striking would be

that it is SMS-enabled. The service will be made available through the product

offering of its sister company called Cellnext, which is an aggregator of

content for mobile phone users. It has tied up with various cellular operators

through which services are made available. The Escolife databases are being

hosted from the VSNL data centers.