hCentive making the Impossible POSSIBLE

Sanjay Singh
CEO, hCentive

What started as a small solutions company in Noida in 2009 is today playing a key role in Barack Obama’s landmark Health Insurance Law in the USA. Sanjay Singh, CEO, hCentive, shares with VARINDIA the journey traversed so far by his company and the accomplishments earned along the way

Headquartered in the USA outside of Washington DC, the focus of hCentive is to provide technology solutions for implementation of US Healthcare Law enacted in 2010 during the President’s first term. “We always wanted to launch a product and Solutions Company. Our previous company GlobalLogic is an IT services company. We saw the passage of this Healthcare law as an opportunity to build a company around it,” says Sanjay Singh, CEO, hCentive.

The country went through a big debate around this law. When Barack Obama was elected President in 2009, he ran a campaign to bring a major change in the way health insurances are sold in the country. Sure enough, a law was passed in 2012 and a dramatic shift took place from how people used to get access to health benefits earlier.

hCentive realized that when the law finally gets enacted it would require a lot of new technology solutions for its implementation. “In 2009, we came out of our day-to-day executive role from GlobalLogic which we had formed almost 10 years back. What we do at hCentive is that we provide technology solutions for creation of these Health Insurance marketplaces (formerly known as Exchanges) that will house government-regulated Healthcare plans, from which individuals may purchase health insurances. Though the country is still divided whether this will be successful or not, we will try to impact in a small way in the success of these Exchanges,” says Sanjay.

The law required that every citizen in the country will be mandated to buy insurance, operationalizing by January 2014, failing which they will be penalized. They need to show as part of their tax filing as proof that their family is insured. It is also required of every state in the Union to have a marketplace like that. If in case a state is not ready with its Exchange, the Federal government can force one on it and default it to the Federal Exchange. Hitherto, 32 states have decided to default.

Besides these government-run exchanges, there is scope for private parties to come and create their own exchanges. This spells more opportunities and expansion plans for hCentive. Around 18 states out of 52 have decided to create their own exchanges, out of which 3 are using hCentive’s technology. With around 450 people, hCentive is building a platform that is used to implement these Exchanges based on their technology in three major states in USA – New York state, Kentucky and Colorado. “Top 3 Health insurance companies and a number of regional players are using our technology to connect to these exchanges. While the country is looking forward to October 1 when these Government mandated exchanges will go live, some of the private exchanges have already gone live,” views Sanjay.

The Channel structure

hCentive has both commercial and state clients. In case of states, it sells only through channel partners as these are huge contracts.The contract is usually awarded to a big SI, say CSC, Cognizant. System Integrators push hCentive’s solutions as a part of their bigger offering and they do not directly deal with the state. “We provide only a part of the total solution, i.e. only the technology. Beyond that there are other responsibilities while selling that solution that the System Integrators handle at large,” reiterates Sanjay. In the commercial space however, they sell directly. 

When hCentive signs any contract, it is responsible for initial installation, ongoing support and maintenance. For support, they have a 24x7 team. For their cloud-based solutions, hCentive provides services from both India and the USA. But for installed solutions, the services are provided in the USA. They are in the process of setting up teams who will monitor the servers round the clock and provide tier-III support.

In terms of its solutions, hCentive has both cloud and installed solutions. States creating their own public exchanges have opted for installed solutions which work with System Integrators to install and operationalize hCentive’s solutions. Java is the development platform that is used, besides other open-source platforms. 

Looking ahead…

Though hCentive does not sell in the Indian market, India remains significant for it as a Design & Conceptualization, Creation & Development and Research centre. After the first phase of law becomes operational on October 1, in the next round, a lot of the 32 states which have defaulted to Federal Exchanges will want to create their own exchanges. Also, there are lots of new private entrants coming in to create their own Exchanges with not many constraints as that of a state Exchange. On its business development side, their expansion plans will revolve this demand that will come from both new public and private exchanges. And accordingly hCentive will increase its manpower both in the USA and India. 

samrita@varindia.com