How do you build trust in a category nobody believes in?
Subrat Pani, Co-Founder of OneAssist, and Sreevathsa Prabhakar, Founder of Servify, both had to answer that question. Same category. Same problem. Two very different playbooks.
The Problem They Both Saw
Our lives are surrounded by gadgets, and they’re only getting more expensive. So what happens when something stops working? Life stops.
The gap was clear. People didn’t have someone they could count on when things went wrong.
Sreevathsa believed the fix had to start at the root. Servify went straight to OEMs, building protection into the product lifecycle from day one.
Subrat started with the emotion. A broken gadget is a high-stress moment. People just want to know who will help. That’s where the name OneAssist came from.
But there was a catch. The category had a trust problem. Nobody believed help would actually show up.
Seeing the problem was easy. Getting people to believe in it wasn’t.
The First Big Roadblock
For OneAssist, building one-stop assistance meant bringing the whole ecosystem along. The hardest part was getting insurers and logistics companies to deliver the service to a customer’s doorstep. That meant aligning them, convincing them, and getting them to see the vision.
For Servify, the challenge was trust itself. Nobody believed that if they paid for a service, someone would actually show up. Changing that mindset was its own battle.
In both cases, trust had to be earned before scale was possible. But scaling came with its own bets and trade-offs.
A Bet That Looked Wrong, Until It Wasn’t
Servify invested heavily in technology from year one. Three years of losses made it feel like the wrong call. That bet later helped Servify scale beyond India and beyond smartphones.
OneAssist took a different bet. It invested in physical retail, starting with just 50 stores despite the cost. Being present where customers were buying new products helped drive adoption.
But not every bet paid off. Some came with lessons learned the hard way.
The Biggest Lie Founders Tell Themselves
Founders believe their ideas will work. Sometimes, they’re wrong.
Servify once expanded into the US, assuming a strong tech story would win over telecom carriers already locked into long-term contracts. It didn’t work that way.
OneAssist treated every signed partner as instant revenue. In reality, conversion often took six to nine months. Its first-year plan was revised six times, always downward.
So, what would they do differently?
What They’d Do Differently
OneAssist would build its org and tech architecture with data layered in from day one, given how fast technology moves now.
Servify would get its insurance license first. Compliance eats time, especially in Western markets. Regulatory timelines, not the product, became the real bottleneck.
These lessons point to a bigger pattern, one every founder in this space should watch for.
Why Most Startups in This Space Fail
Insurtech startups often solve what insurers already do instead of what’s still unsolved.
Distribution alone isn’t enough. Acquisition costs and customer value need to work together. The goal isn’t to compete with insurers. It’s to work with them.
More simply, are you building a painkiller or a vitamin?
Chasing valuation over real value rarely works. And changing consumer behaviour takes years, not quarters.
A decade in, both founders are looking ahead.
Where They’re Both Betting Next
OneAssist sees devices moving beyond screens towards tech you simply talk to. As that happens, protection only becomes more important.
Servify sees an opportunity in the 500 to 600 million pre-owned devices already sitting in homes. It’s also moving into used cars. The focus is shifting to protecting what people already own, not just what they’re about to buy.
None of it matters if the customer doesn’t make it to checkout.
Powering the Business Behind the Trust
Trust gets customers to the product. A smooth checkout turns that trust into revenue.
PayU helps Insurtech businesses accept seamless payments and drive conversion with:
Payment Gateway – Accept 150+ payment modes with industry-leading success rates, 99.98% uptime, and seamless integration across web and app platforms.
No One Way to Scale
Two founders. One category. Two very different ways to build it.
There was no playbook for creating trust in a category that barely existed. They had to build their own.
That’s what scale looks like. Not following a single formula, but knowing which bets to make, which lessons to learn, and when to keep going.
PayU powers platforms like OneAssist and Servify, so founders can focus on building what’s next.
