“The biggest problem for a human being is not having access to medical care“.
A Bangalore there is an Italian girl who launched a startup that is revolutionizing the health insurance market. It offers 360-degree assistance in India, a huge country, where public healthcare is almost totally absent, everyone is forced to pay medical expenses and there are those who have to choose between treatment or eating.
She is Matilde Giglio, 31 years old, is Roman. Is considered among the 10 “Indian” women entrepreneurs who are changing India. And his is a wonderful story. Full of dots that come together. Of falls, of turning points, of crucial meetings. And adventures. Since she was a little girl she has wanted to change the world.
She has three great passions: politics, which will also lead her to work for Gandhi’s party in Delhi during the Indian elections. Extreme sport. Climbing, climbing, she has already done it at 9 years old bungee jumping. And entrepreneurship. The first startup is in London in the world of journalism. She is 23 years old. He builds software from scratch, spends three years on a roller coaster and then closes. “I made so many mistakes, I learned great lessons.”
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I interview her over the phone while she is in Bangalore. Below you can hear the typical chaos of Indian streets, the horns, the shouting, the creative confusion that anyone who has been to India knows. “Everything is difficult here, crossing the street, opening a bank account, founding a startup, the bureaucracy, getting money from investors but I wake up happy. I have the opportunity to create a great business with a high social impact. Even, my startup, was born with this dream. Why India? Because that’s where it was needed.”
At 19, Matilde is already outside Italy. Her story starts from Rome, Visconti classical high school, with no idea what to do when she grows up. From her side, however, she has ambition. She decides to enroll at the London School of Economics and Political Science. “I wanted to leave and get out of my comfort zone because I was looking for an opportunity. It cost me a lot. I didn’t know anyone, at school I was the person who spoke the worst English. Yet that was the most important decision of my life”. Matilde graduates with top marks, her thesis receives a prize. Meanwhile, Brexit breaks out. She realizes how important information is and having an app that brings together all the news. Thus he launches Compass News, a journalism startup, based on machine learning. “We taught machines to type before ChatGpt was cool. I was 23, I didn’t know anyone who had done something like that. But I was ambitious, stubborn and rebellious.”
The startup grows, convinces publications like the Financial Times, The Economist and the Wall Street Journal: Provides them with items. Raises £1.5m from UK and US VCs, including Bloomberg. He opens an office in New York, builds a team of 30 people including the editor of Times, George Brock, who becomes their head of publishing. But at a certain point he can’t climb.
“I made the decision to close. The software was taken over by Bloomberg. I had learned everything: how to build a product from scratch, what it means to do fundraising, how to create a team. But I had also suffered: when you think about the future of the people who work for you or when you fly all night for a vital appointment and see it canceled half an hour before. It wasn’t technically a failure, I returned the money to the investors, but I I felt tired and failed. I was 26 years old. Then right Hambro Perks, a leading VC in London, who had invested in Compass, told me: “Whatever you do, we want to finance it. Now rest up and in the meantime come and be an investor.” He immediately gave me self-esteem and a high position: Head of healthcare and fintech, to invest in early-stage technology companies. I made 30 investments, it was a wonderful job, I approached the world of healthcare. But I felt like I wanted to do something more. In places where I could make an impact. I dreamed of changing things.” And this is where another contact changes her life. “One of my investors in Compass was a friend of Rahul Ghandi. It was 2019, there were Indian national elections.”
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Matilde leaves, goes to New Delhi, he must remain there for six months. “It was an incredible experience. Maybe, it’s the craziest thing I’ve done in my life. I became Head of digital of the Congress party, the party of the National Congress. I managed a huge team, more than 100 people, I had 60 million dollars to spend on communications. We have created an election campaign from scratch. In those six months it is as if I had done a master’s degree on India and its problems. I understood needs of the people. Two of the most important: work and access to medical care. We forget how lucky we are in Italy with public health.
In India everyone pays out of pocket. Insurance products are restrictive and unfriendly for consumers. The market is huge. India is three times the size of Europe, it is the most populous country in the world and today has 1.4 billion people. The middle class is made up of 350 million people. Nearly 60 million families go bankrupt for treatment. The number of people who want health insurance is growing by 25% every year.”
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Even was born in this period. Year 2021. “Ours is health insurance that covers 360-degree health. It is the only one in India to provide hospital insurance, specialist visits and primary care. We offer it to families, for a cost of around 200 euros per year, and to companies. Recently in India, companies are obliged to offer employees health insurance.
How does it work? “It’s a sort of family doctor. Only when necessary, they refer you to hospitals. We have agreements with clinics and hospitals present in all Indian cities and we also have several of our own clinics in the area.”
In two years Matilde raised over 20 million dollars from the most important VCs in the world. From Khosla Ventures, an American venture capital company founded by Vinod Khosla, from Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s fund to his first investment in an Indian startup.
“There is also a bit of Italy among my investors. Nerio Alessandri, founder of Tecnhogym he invested in me and He mentors me. There is a lot of interest around the problem. Even offers a service 100 times better than others, we have higher margins and an affordable price for the middle class. But we are working to allow it for everyone. We went from 0 to 15 million dollars in turnover in one year.”
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Among the 250 people in the team, there is only one other Italian and he is one of the two cofounders. His name is Alessandro Lalongo, is Matilde’s lifelong friend and middle school classmate. “He worked at Google Deepmind, but when I looked for him he left everything and in 7 days he took a plane. The other cofounder is Mayank Benarjee (with whom he had formed my first company). The rest are all Indians, people who often studied elsewhere and then returned home.”
“Doing a business in such a complex country is a daily challenge, but Bangalore is one of the most interesting places that exist to do a startup. It’s difficult, but there’s only one life and I want to spend it doing something useful.
Doing business also means creating wealth for the people who work for you. Everyone at Even has a stake in the company which is three times larger than what you typically receive. I quickly realized the importance of being generous. I’m not the smartest person on my team, but I can be courageous, tolerant of risk and suffering. I have nerve.”
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“I never focused on negative things. In London, when I was starting out, I had an interview in a finance company. They were all men, and I heard them say: “I can’t even hire you as a secretary because you have a strong Italian accent”. This person, a year ago, applied to become head of communications at Even. It all adds up. We didn’t hire him, not out of revenge, but because he wasn’t the best….
“I dream of returning to Italy, maybe in 20 years, but this is my secret dream. I suffer terribly from being away. I want to return with all my heart but I think it is worth putting your personal well-being on the back burner in the name of a higher ideal. I would like to solve a real problem for the largest and most unexplored country in the world. And I would like to do it, building a great company with talented people. I’m doing my best not to wake up in 10 years and say to myself: I did everything wrong, why did I do it? “.
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