Warns of further 15–20% inflation in the coming year, putting even greater pressure on underinsured Indian households

Bengaluru, India | November 5, 2025: Plum, India’s leading employee health benefits platform, today unveiled the latest findings from its proprietary insights engine – Plum Data Labs – spotlighting a two-front battle in India’s cancer crisis: one that’s being won through early detection, and another that’s being lost to outdated insurance frameworks and rapidly rising treatment costs.

Titled The Burden of Cancer, the report is based on an analysis of 100,000 claims from across the country. It offers one of the most granular views yet into how cancer is being diagnosed, treated, and funded in urban India, especially through the lens of insurance outcomes and patient burden.

Key insights from the report:

The Progress: Early Detection Is Working

• ●  Stage 0 (in-situ) cancer detections surged 72% between 2022 and 2025
• ●  Today, 35% of all cancer claims are for localized, non-invasive cancers
• ●  Early detection correlates with 95%+ 5-year survival rates and lower costs –

  median treatment of ₹1.63L with an average 1–2 claims; shorter, high-prognosis

  treatment cycles

• ●  Blood and lymphatic cancers are rising among working-age adults (median age:

  33.5 years), but are more likely to benefit from early detection

  The Strain: Insurance Isn’t Catching Up

• ●  1 in 8 cancer patients exhaust their ₹5L policy limit within a single year, especially for brain, colorectal, and advanced blood cancers
• ●  Approval rates have dropped from 76% (H1 2023) to 63% (H1 2025), with an average reimbursement time of 3–4 weeks per claim
• ●  Immunotherapies and advanced treatments are often excluded or capped, worsening patient out-of-pocket burden
• ●  Leukaemia coverage sits at just 41%; lung cancer payout averages ₹45,990 vs actual costs of ₹2–8L

  The Impact: Financial Devastation for Families

• ●  Urban, insured households lose 5–15+ years of savings on average during prolonged cancer journeys
• ●  Some families lose 30–42 years’ worth of savings in extreme cases

• ●  The median cost for complex cancer journeys exceeds ₹9.1L, with severe cases crossing ₹15.4L
• ●  Multi-claim realities are rising – serious cases require 11–22 individual claims (some over 30), causing liquidity crises even for well-insured families

  Commenting on the insights from the report, Abhishek Poddar, Co-founder and CEO, Plum said, “Cancer care in India has shifted dramatically but our insurance systems are still designed for a version of the disease that no longer exists. What the data shows is clear: families are doing the right thing – detecting cancer early, following advanced treatment plans; but they’re still left financially exposed. It’s time for a fundamental reset in how we insure long-term illnesses like cancer, before affordability becomes the next health crisis.”

  Based on these findings, the report outlines urgent structural reforms required across India’s insurance and employer-sponsored health systems:

• ●  Eliminate sublimits and exclusions for advanced therapies such as immunotherapy and targeted treatments that are increasingly central to modern cancer care.
• ●  Revise sum insured and payout design to reflect the reality of long-cycle, high-cost conditions like cancer
• ●  Accelerate claim reimbursement timelines to reduce liquidity stress for families, especially those facing multi-claim treatment journeys.
• ●  Expand preventive screening access in urban and salaried populations to reinforce early detection, which has proven to reduce both mortality and financial burden.
• ●  Over and above OPD covers, include coverage of preventive treatment and screenings, including HPV vaccine and genome testing to reduce the burden on individuals.

  “The numbers tell us that we’re winning the early fight where we are catching more cancers at stage zero than ever before, but treatment inflation is rising just as fast. If this trend continues, even early-stage cases could start to strain household budgets. The future of healthcare lies in embedding prevention and screening deeply into our systems, and redesigning protection around the full lifecycle of disease and not just its endpoints.” Saurabh Arora, Co-founder and CTO, Plum said.

  About Plum Data Labs

  Plum Data Labs is Plum’s proprietary insights platform designed to decode India’s health and insurance reality through its proprietary data of insurance claims, doctor consultations, and health checkups across 600k users. Built to inform policy reform, public conversation, and consumer choice, the platform aims to help India make better decisions for better health outcomes.

  About Plum

  Plum is India’s leading insur-tech platform offering employee wellness solutions and business insurance solutions to 6000+ corporations. Founded in 2019, the company is on a mission to accelerate the adoption of health insurance in India by making employee health insurance accessible, affordable and usable for employees. It is re-imagining the health

insurance stack and accelerating the penetration of health insurance in India to 100%. Plum is backed by marquee investors, including Tiger Global and Peak XV Partners.

For more details, please visit: https://www.plumhq.com/.