Leading health insurance and benefits platform Plum has announced the appointment of Sankaralingam (Sankar) as its new Senior Vice President of Engineering. With over 25 years of experience in engineering leadership roles across top-tier companies like Amazon, Cisco, Intel, and Jupiter, Sankar joins Plum to lead the company’s next phase of growth as it scales its comprehensive healthcare intelligence platform.
Plum’s appointment of Sankar comes at a crucial time as the company transitions from an insurtech provider to one of India’s most comprehensive healthcare platforms. With this strategic hire, Plum is reinforcing its vision of making insurance and healthcare accessible, preventive, and personalised for every Indian employee.
Plum already supports over 6,000 companies and processes more than 100,000 insurance claims annually. Under Sankar’s leadership, Plum’s engineering team will focus on scaling its platform to reach 10 million users by 2030, building a secure, AI-powered infrastructure to support this exponential growth.
“India’s insurance and healthcare sectors are experiencing a profound transformation, and Plum is distinctively placed to spearhead this change,” said Sankar. “Having built scalable multi-product platforms, I understand the opportunity when you get the engineering foundation right. Plum already supports 6,000+ companies and enjoys strong user affection—our focus now is on scaling and evolving the platform to offer comprehensive healthcare products to more than 10+ million users.”
Sankar has led engineering and product teams at industry leaders like Amazon, Intel, and Cisco, and most recently at Jupiter. His deep expertise in building scalable, multi-product platforms across different stages of company maturity makes him the ideal leader to guide Plum’s technical evolution.
“Sankar brings exactly the combination of startup agility and enterprise-scale expertise we need,” said Saurabh Arora, Co-founder & CTO of Plum. “His experience across startups and global enterprises like Amazon and Intel, combined with his proven ability to build high-performing engineering teams, makes him the perfect leader to guide our technical evolution as we scale across three product verticals.”
Plum’s engineering team, now under Sankar’s leadership, is driving AI-powered innovations that are reshaping the user experience in health and insurance services:
95% automation of reimbursement claims via API-led integrations with top insurers like ICICI Lombard, Niva Bupa, Bajaj Allianz, and Digit, reducing settlement time from 30 days to just 3.
AI-driven support systems have cut customer service tickets by 30%, improving first-contact resolution from 30% to 70%.
Plum Health Wallet now offers India’s fastest OPD claim processing, with filing under one minute and same-day payouts.
As part of its long-term vision, Plum recently announced a ₹200 crore (~USD 25 million) investment to expand its healthcare vertical. The company plans to scale its healthcare team fivefold and further enhance its AI-driven platform to deliver holistic, data-driven health guidance by integrating diagnostics, telehealth, wellness, insurance, and claims.
“Sankar joins us to lead our engineering team as we scale across three product verticals and expand our healthcare team fivefold,” said Abhishek Poddar, Co-Founder & CEO of Plum. “His appointment reinforces our commitment to building world-class engineering capabilities as we work toward our vision of making insurance and healthcare accessible to every Indian employee.”
With this leadership appointment, Plum reaffirms its commitment to combining deep healthcare expertise, scalable technology, and AI-powered automation to redefine the future of insurance and healthcare in India.
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