Park+ Partners with ICICI Lombard to Launch Car Insurance
Gurugram (Haryana) [India], May 19: ICICI Lombard, India's leading private general insurance company has joined hands with Park+, India's leading auto-tech super app, to offer a seamless car insurance experience to Park+ users. This collaboration signifies the coming together of two industry giants to revolutionize motor insurance by offering convenience, reliability, and a digital process. With this collaboration, over 2 crore Park+ users will now have access to industry-best car insurance solutions in just a few clicks.
Owning a car is a significant milestone for millions of Indians, but the process of getting the right insurance often feels overwhelming. This partnership aims to eliminate the anxiety associated with purchasing motor insurance by offering a streamlined digital process. With ICICI Lombard's trusted solutions and Park+'s tech-driven platform, car owners can now safeguard their vehicles conveniently and affordably.
With its deep integration into car ownership, Park+ already connects with service centers across the country. This ensures a seamless claims process, allowing users to tie up their entire insurance journey-from issuance to claims-on one platform. By adding car insurance to its service portfolio, Park+ App has completed its digital car ownership ecosystem.
ICICI Lombard & Park+ Advantages:
* Hassle-free digital insurance issuance: Get your car insured within minutes
* Seamless claims process: Thanks to Park+'s integration with service centers across India, users benefit from a hassle-free experience during claims.
* Comprehensive motor insurance: Insurance solutions for both new and used cars, backed by ICICI Lombard's trusted expertise.
Commenting on the partnership, Amit Lakhotia, Founder & CEO, Park+, said, "At Park+ our main objective is to bring delight back to car ownership. As part of this endeavour, we have partnered with ICICI Lombard to unlock a simplified motor insurance experience for our users. We today host the largest community of car owners (2Cr car owners) on our app and wanted to enhance their potential/existing car ownership experience by making car insurance- simpler, easier and affordable. Our robust relationship with ICICI Lombard will allow us to unlock attractive car insurance offers and immediate approvals, all at one place- on the Park+ App. We will continue to invest our energies in enhancing the car ownership experience for car owners, throughout the life cycle of their car and look forward to partnering with other external stakeholders to support us in this endeavour."
Mr. Anand Singhi - Chief - Retail & Government Business, ICICI Lombard, said, "We are excited to partner with Park+ to transform the car insurance landscape in India. This collaboration not only enhances the convenience and efficiency of obtaining motor insurance but also empowers the millions of car owners within Park+'s vast community. With our trusted insurance solutions integrated into Park+'s digital platform, we are committed to providing a comprehensive, hassle-free experience that caters to the needs of both new and used car owners. Together, we aim to simplify the motor insurance journey, making it accessible and seamless for all."
Founded in 2019 by Amit Lakhotia, Park+ is a super app for car owners that solves the daily challenges faced by car owners - ranging from parking, FASTag management, car insurance, automated vehicle access control systems and EV charging stations. Backed by Sequoia Capital and Matrix Partners, Park+ today hosts India's largest community of car owners on its platform. Park+ is present in 5000+ residential societies, 250+ offices and 50+ malls across 30+ Indian cities, including Delhi NCR, Bangalore and Mumbai.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
&w=3840&q=100)
Business Standard
an hour ago
- Business Standard
Kuwait offers visa on arrival for Indians with valid GCC residence permit
Indians residing in the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or Bahrain with a valid residency permit can now obtain a visa on arrival in Kuwait. The move, which came into effect immediately, was announced on Sunday through the official gazette, Kuwait Alyoum. First Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Sheikh Fahad Al-Yousef confirmed that the new rules replace the 2008 regulations governing the entry of foreign residents from other Gulf states into Kuwait for tourism purposes. According to the Indian government's data tabled in Parliament last year, more than nine million Indians were living in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries in 2024. With such large numbers, the change is expected to ease travel for a considerable section of this community. How visa on arrival works Travellers can now: • Arrive at a Kuwaiti port of entry, such as an airport, land border or seaport • Present their passport, proof of GCC residency and any required documents • Have their visa processed immediately at the immigration counter Travel between GCC countries While citizens of GCC countries have long enjoyed easy cross-border travel, foreign residents — who make up over half of the region's population of 61.2 million as of the end of 2024 — faced more restrictions. Under the 2008 rules, only certain categories of GCC residents, such as doctors, engineers, judges and executives, could get a tourist visa on arrival in Kuwait. The new rules open this facility to all foreign residents with valid permits. Eligibility for the new visa on arrival According to the announcement: • Applicants must be foreign nationals residing in any GCC member state • Residency permits in a GCC country must be valid for at least six months • Visas will be issued at the port of entry after immigration officials verify residency status Not for all Indian travellers The visa on arrival is only available to Indians holding a valid GCC residence permit. Those without such permits will still need to apply for a visa in advance and wait for approval before travelling.
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
When Made-in-India engines alarmed the British
Why India-built engines were banned by the British Live Events How railways worked as an extractive instrument (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel The Indian Railways are often romanticised as a colonial gift, an infrastructure legacy that unified a fragmented land and modernised the subcontinent. However, this narrative masks the deeper colonial motives behind their construction. Far from being a benevolent gesture, the British-built railways were a strategic tool of economic exploitation, crafted to serve imperial interests. Though the benefits that did accrue to Indians were incidental or emerged post-Independence, when the infrastructure was repurposed for national development, the British colonial railway system was primarily designed to extract resources, facilitate control and maximize profit for the British Empire, often at the expense of Indian industry and self-sufficiency.A related myth is that India may not have got its own railways if not for the British colonial regime, though railways did reach many countries which were not colonised by Europeans. A little-known historical fact points at the fact that railways may have been invented in England, but India could have indigenised the technology much earlier, and made it cheaper railway workshops in Jamalpur in Bengal and Ajmer in Rajputana were established in 1862 to maintain the trains. The British were surprised when their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives, writes Shashi Tharoor in his book "Inglorious Empire"."Their success increasingly alarmed the British, since the Indian locomotives were just as good, and a great deal cheaper, than the British-made ones. In 1912, therefore, the British passed an act of parliament explicitly making it impossible for Indian workshops to design and manufacture locomotives. Between 1854 and 1947, India imported around 14,400 locomotives from England, and another 3,000 from Canada, the US and Germany, but made none in India after 1912. After independence, 35 years later, the old technical knowledge was so completely lost to India that the Indian Railways had to go cap-in-hand to the British to guide them on setting up a locomotive factory in India again," writes primary aim of the British railway network was not to develop India but to integrate it into the global capitalist economy as a supplier of raw materials and a consumer of British manufactured goods. Railways were constructed to connect resource-rich interiors—coal mines in Bengal, cotton fields in Maharashtra, jute plantations in Bengal, and opium-growing regions in Bihar—to port cities like Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata), and Madras (Chennai). These ports served as conduits for shipping raw materials to British railway system in India was built largely with British capital, under a system that virtually guaranteed profits to British investors, while transferring the financial risks to Indian taxpayers. Under the 'guaranteed return' system, British companies were promised a 5% return on their investment, regardless of the railway's actual profitability. If earnings fell short, the Indian government made up the difference using tax revenue, effectively subsidising British investors."The railways were first conceived of by the East India Company, like everything else in that firm's calculations, for its own benefit," Tharoor writes. "Governor General Lord Hardinge argued in 1843 that the railways would be beneficial 'to the commerce, government and military control of the country'. In their very conception and construction, the Indian railways were a colonial scam."While the colonial railways also played a critical role in enabling British control of India, strengthening bureaucratic control over vast territories and deepening the reach of imperial authority, the railways were embedded in a system of racial and class segregation."And, of course, racism reigned; though whites-only compartments were soon done away with on grounds of economic viability, Indians found the available affordable space grossly inadequate for their numbers. (A marvellous post-independence cartoon captured the situation perfectly: it showed an overcrowded train, with people hanging off it, clinging to the windows, squatting perilously on the roof, and spilling out of their third-class compartments, while two Britons in sola topis sit in an empty first-class compartment saying to each other, 'My dear chap, there's nobody on this train!')," writes Tharoor."Nor were Indians employed in the railways," he writes. "The prevailing view was that the railways would have to be staffed almost exclusively by Europeans to 'protect investments'. This was especially true of signalmen, and those who operated and repaired the steam trains, but the policy was extended to the absurd level that even in the early 20th century all the key employees, from directors of the Railway Board to ticket-collectors, were white men – whose salaries and benefits were also paid at European, not Indian, levels and largely repatriated back to England."While the British did build a vast railway network in India, it was not an altruistic endeavor. The railways were a quintessential tool of imperial exploitation, designed to extract, control, and profit, rather than to develop, empower, or unify. The myth of the colonial railway as a gift to India is a narrative that needs critical re-examination. It is only by confronting these colonial legacies one can appreciate the resilience of post-colonial nations in turning instruments of oppression into tools of progress.
Mint
6 hours ago
- Mint
Cow's milk, as well as Russian oil, fuels the US-India trade war
Donald Trump has beef with India for buying oil from Russia. But the American president's tariffs totalling 50% on many Indian exports—set to come into force later this month—are not just about geopolitics. Agriculture and dairy have been the most contentious issues in India's talks with America, which broke down this month. And it is over farming that India's equally combative prime minister, Narendra Modi, has chosen to fight back. 'India will never compromise on the wellbeing of its farmers, dairy and fishermen," he thundered in Delhi on August 7th, a day after Mr Trump's announcement. For Hindu-nationalist politicians like Mr Modi, the dairy industry has particular importance (the cow is sacred in Hinduism). But it is also a source of national pride, seen as a poverty-alleviating triumph of enlightened policymaking, technological advance and international co-operation. India is a milk superpower. For nearly three decades it has been the world's biggest producer and is now the source of about a quarter of the global total. Yet, from the point of view of India's trading partners, notably America, the industry seems to sum up all that is wrong with India. It is grossly inefficient, subsidised, polluting (all that methane) and heavily protected by high tariff barriers and a perplexing lattice of arcane non-tariff ones. Can these diametrically opposed views be reconciled? The answer matters a lot to India's trade diplomacy. It is not just America that complains about access to the Indian market. It is a sticking-point in negotiations with the European Union, too, and was one of the thorniest issues in the negotiations leading to a free-trade agreement with Britain signed last month. It may also have been the main reason why India pulled out of a big regional trade deal in 2019. Indian dairy still basks in the glow of a 'white revolution" launched in 1970. At the time Indians already had more cattle than any other country, but they consumed an average of about 100 millilitres of milk a day, far below recommended nutritional standards. Some of that had to be imported. By the turn of the century India had virtually doubled the availability of milk per person. Dairy practices had been modernised and the cross-breeding of cattle had boosted yields. A network of tens of thousands of co-operatives had been established, improving distribution and logistics, financed by the sale of skimmed milk powder and butter donated by the European Economic Community, the EU's forebear. Yields have continued to improve this century, but the structure of the industry remains unchanged. 'White Revolution 2.0", launched by the government last year, aims not to reform but expand it, with co-operatives increasing milk procurement by 50% over five years. Production will still depend on tens of millions of smallholders—families with a cow that grazes on their plot, produces dung and urine to be used as fertiliser, and provides milk for the family, sometimes with a surplus to sell. Himanshu (who goes by one name), a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, points out that Mr Modi and Mr Trump are both very 'pro-farmer". But their farmers, including dairy farmers, could hardly be more different. India has about 200m cattle, of which the United States Department of Agriculture estimates 62m are dairy cows. Yet the average 'herd" consists of fewer than four, and the average landholding of just one hectare. A number widely used is that 80m families have one or more cows or buffaloes. America has just 24,000 dairy farms, with an average herd size of about 390. Co-operatives guarantee Indian farmers a buyer for their milk, and pay them bonuses when prices rise. A handful have become big national organisations—notably Amul, from Gujarat, home state of Mr Modi and his powerful cabinet minister, Amit Shah. So vaunted is the success of the agricultural co-operative system that in July Mr Shah unveiled plans to extend it to other businesses such as tourism, taxis and green energy. Proud as Indians are of their cows and their dairy farmers, they have to admit that both are, by international standards, woefully unproductive. The average American cow produces about seven times as much milk as her Indian competitor. India protects its dairy farmers with import tariffs comparable to those Mr Trump is now imposing on Indian exporters: 40% on most butter and cheese and 60% on powdered milk. Without these protections, says Shashi Kumar, boss of Akshayakalpa, a privately owned organic-dairy business in southern India that works with 2,200 small farmers, 'smallholder farms will collapse". It is not just tariffs that Mr Trump's negotiators object to. India excludes imports of all genetically modified crops except cotton, and in dairy there is a ban on what has become known as 'non-veg milk"—with a requirement that imported dairy products be certified to come from cows that had not been fed animal products such as bonemeal. The ban is often decried as a non-tariff barrier dressed up in politically correct Hindu-nationalist clothes. Vijay Sardana, a lawyer and agri-economist, points out it was in fact introduced in 2003, when he drafted the law in response to the BSE (mad-cow disease) scare in Europe. Still, the perception that the Indian government will use any available tactic to protect its farmers is probably justified. Harish Damodaran, the agriculture editor of the Indian Express, a newspaper, points out that twice in four years India's farmers have fended off attempts at reform. In 2021 their prolonged, angry protests in Delhi forced Mr Modi to repeal three laws introducing sensible deregulatory reforms. Mr Trump's effort to impose change through diplomacy may prove equally fruitless.
