‘Healthcare Must Reward Prevention, Not Procedures’: Loop Health’s Ryan Singh on Crossing 1 Million Lives

In an exclusive interview with Business Today, Ryan Singh shares how a co-founder’s personal crisis became a mission to transform healthcare in India. From identifying systemic incentives that favour procedures over prevention to building a health benefits platform that manages care for over 1 million lives, Singh explains why Loop Health's integrated insurance and healthcare model is reshaping corporate healthcare in the country. Edited excerpts:  

 Loop Health recently crossed 1 million lives. What does that milestone mean for the company?  

Crossing 1 million lives means 1 million individuals and their families whose health is actively managed, not just insured. To give a sense of scale: our medical team has answered over 390,000 health questions—roughly one every four minutes — that would otherwise have been Googled or ignored. We've completed over 209,000 doctor consultations, with zero time spent in a waiting room, and more than 40,000 lab tests integrated into actionable lab reports, or what we call care plans, rather than PDFs.  

Loop Health now works with over 1,250 companies, including Nasdaq, Lodha, Zepto, Ola, and other enterprise clients, driven not by discounting – like most of the broking industry – but by strong CSAT and retention. Once companies experience an integrated model — prevention plus crisis support — they rarely go back to fragmented alternatives.  

That's a significant milestone. Since we're here, we'd love to hear how Loop Health came into being. I understand it started with a personal moment for one of the founders?  

It did. In 2015, while my co-founder, Mayank Kale, was studying in the US, his father had a heart attack back home in India. He didn't smoke or drink and exercised regularly, yet he underwent a bypass surgery. Later, after speaking with more than 100 doctors and reviewing medical records, we discovered the surgery was never actually needed.  

That experience made one thing painfully clear: the problem wasn't one doctor or one hospital. It was the system. Hospitals and providers were financially incentivised to push procedures. They profited when patients were sick, not when they stayed healthy. The system wasn't broken, it was working exactly as designed. 

That insight brought Mayank back to India, where he teamed up with Amrit and me. The three of us set up in a small apartment in Pune with one question: Can we reimagine healthcare to make prevention central rather than peripheral?  

And that question led you to corporate health benefits. Why is that as the entry point?  

We realised early that simply building another wellness app or retail telehealth solution wouldn't scale. The consideration window for retail products was too small, and unfortunately, individuals aren’t out there “shopping” for preventative care. We saw our path to scale in corporate benefits, where companies were already spending INR 20,000–INR 30,000 per employee annually on health, including emergency coverage. CHROs wanted ways to improve the health of their teams, and CFOs wanted to save costs by reducing preventable claims. We figured this was a way to serve both.  

The central decision we made was this: preventive care must be at the core and not an afterthought. It wasn't enough to pay claims after people got sick. Could we become an employee health benefits partner that helped keep people from getting sick in the first place while still being there when things went wrong? That dual mandate became the foundation of Loop Health.  

What were the specific gaps you saw in how corporate health benefits were working?  

The problems were obvious. Most employer spends activate when someone ends up in a hospital. Nearly half of India's corporate workforce is migrant, many without a regular doctor. When these employees feel unwell, they either Google their symptoms, rely on AI, visit OPDs that have incentives to over-prescribe, or delay care until it becomes an emergency.  

Annual health check-ups existed, but once reports were emailed as PDFs, there was no interpretation, no follow-up, and no continuity. Healthcare doesn't work as a one-off interaction. It needs to flow, from screening to interpretation to management, which was missing across the ecosystem.  

So how doesLoop Health fill that gap? What did you build that others hadn't?  

We built continuity of care into the system. That meant hiring our own in-house medical team, doctors employed and trained by Loop Health, not outsourced teleconsultants. We built a diagnostic network where lab results feed directly into a member's health profile. We created an Electronic Medical Records system that unifies consultations, prescriptions, lab results, and claims. 

Because we own the medical value chain, doctors see a member's history before consulting. Context is available, and decisions are informed. On the prevention side, conditions are flagged early, and members receive structured management plans, not just reports. On the claims side, support teams coordinate with hospitals and approvals. This isn't episodic care; it's ongoing care.  

How does this model change the economics for the employers paying for these benefits?  

When employees stay healthier, claims go down, and premiums stabilise. More importantly, a healthier workforce is a more productive one. Companies were already spending the money; our role was to make that spending work harder. Prevention reduces long-term costs. Continuity of care improves outcomes. Those are not buzzwords, they are measurable impacts on utilisation, productivity, and costs.  

That's what getting to 1 million lives has validated. The model works: for employers, for employees, and for their families.  

What's next for Loop Health as you scale beyond 1 million?  

We're now scaling HealthFlex, a flexible benefits platform product launched in October 2025 that allows enterprises to allocate their health budgets between traditional insurance and employee-controlled wallets for out-of-pocket expenses like mental health, pharmacy, and preventive programs. We're also deepening chronic condition management with structured programs for diabetes, cardiovascular health, and mental wellness. In June 2025, we welcomed Harpreet Singh Rai, former CEO of Oura, as President of Healthcare, signalling our commitment to scaling proactive care.  

What started in a Pune apartment as a question about prevention is now a benefits platform managing healthcare for over 1 million Indians. The next chapter is about what Loop Health looks like at 10 million.