Kotak Meter: Turning an Industry Averaging 1.2 Interactions a Year Into 12x Monthly App Logins
People check their insurance app about as often as they think about insurance itself, almost never. ibs Fulcro built Kotak Meter, the world's first car insurance with cashback, giving Zurich Kotak General Insurance customers a genuine daily reason to open the app: switch off cover when the car isn't being driven, and get paid for it.
At a glance
Client: Zurich Kotak General Insurance (Insurance)
Problem: Car insurance is a genuinely low-engagement category; most policyholders never open their insurer's app after purchase.
Solution: Kotak Meter, the world's first car insurance with cashback: users switch off cover when their car isn't in use and earn real, redeemable cashback for every day it stays off.
Result: Average app logins per month: 12x
ibs Fulcro's role: Mobile App Development
The Marketing Challenge
Insurance is one of the lowest-involvement categories in consumer brand engagement. The industry average sits at just 1.2 brand interactions per year, meaning most policyholders never think about their insurer between the day they buy a policy and the day they need to file a claim. Zurich Kotak General Insurance set out to change that fundamentally, not by pushing more communication at customers, but by giving them a genuine, recurring reason to open the app on their own.
The Idea: The World's First Insurance With Cashback
ibs Fulcro built Kotak Meter, introducing a genuinely new category: the world's first car insurance with cashback. After downloading and registering, users could switch off their car insurance cover whenever the car wasn't in use, earning bonus days for every 24-hour period the cover stayed off. Those accumulated bonus days converted directly into a real cashback, up to 40% of the premium.
The Cashback Structure
| Days of Cover Switched Off | Cashback Earned |
|---|---|
| 20 to 60 days | 15% |
| 61 to 120 days | 25% |
| 121+ days | 40% |
Source: campaign video, ibs Fulcro / Zurich Kotak General Insurance.
Why a tiered structure mattered, not just a flat cashback rate: a single flat percentage would have rewarded any amount of idle time equally. Tiering the cashback so that longer stretches of switched-off cover earned proportionally more gave customers a genuine incentive to keep returning to the app to check, extend, and manage their status, rather than switching the cover off once and forgetting about it. The mechanic itself was built to be habit-forming.
Beyond the Core Mechanic: A Full Policy Management App
The cashback mechanic drove the habit, but the app's functionality went well beyond meter policies alone. Users could manage other insurance policies from the same app, locate nearby network garages and hospitals, initiate a claim directly, and track settlement status, turning what could have been a single-feature gimmick into a genuine utility app customers had real reasons to keep on their phone.
The overall Zurich Kotak app, including the Kotak Meter experience, was built on React Native, letting a single codebase serve both iOS and Android without the cost and drift of maintaining two fully separate native apps.
The Eco-Impact Layer: Making the Habit Shareable
Every period a user's car sat idle also had a real environmental impact, and the app quantified it directly. Users could view their own “Eco Hero Certificate” showing exactly how many days their car had been idle, the equivalent CO2 emissions reduced as a result, and a relatable comparison, expressed in terms of the equivalent number of trees planted. Users could then post that certificate directly to social networks, turning an individual financial incentive into a piece of shareable, socially visible content.
The Real Commercial Upside: Cross-Selling to an Engaged Audience
Beyond driving app engagement for its own sake, Kotak Meter gave Zurich Kotak General Insurance something genuinely valuable: a base of meter customers now opening the app regularly enough to be shown other relevant insurance products directly inside the same experience, rather than through a separate, colder sales channel.
The Results
Kotak Meter drove average app logins to 12 times per month, a dramatic shift for a category averaging 1.2 brand interactions a year. Users earned an average of 7.9 times more bonus days per month, and spent an average of 37 minutes in the app monthly. Beyond engagement, 7% of users went on to buy other insurance policies directly through the app, and 36% of users shared their carbon footprint savings on social media, extending the campaign's reach organically.
Why this comparison is the one that actually matters. Insurance apps rarely have a reason to be opened outside of a claim. Going from an industry-wide average of roughly one interaction a year to twelve logins a month, in the same category, on the same kind of product, is direct evidence the cashback mechanic created a genuinely new, recurring reason for customers to engage, not just a one-time novelty.
Why This Matters Beyond One App
The underlying pattern here is transferable to any low-involvement category struggling for genuine engagement: find the one behaviour a customer already does anyway, in this case, simply not driving the car on a given day, and build a real, tangible reward directly on top of it, rather than asking customers to adopt an entirely new habit. Layering a shareable, socially visible element on top of that reward, and using the resulting engagement as a natural moment to introduce other relevant products, is what turned a single clever feature into a genuinely new customer relationship.
Frequently asked questions
Kotak Meter is the world's first car insurance with cashback, built by ibs Fulcro for Zurich Kotak General Insurance. It lets users switch off their car insurance cover whenever their car isn't in use, earning bonus days for every 24-hour period switched off, which convert into a cashback of up to 40%.
Cashback is tiered based on how many days a user's cover has been switched off: 15% for 20 to 60 days, 25% for 61 to 120 days, and 40% for 121 or more days. Longer periods of switched-off cover earn a proportionally higher cashback rate.
The app also lets users manage other insurance policies, locate nearby network garages and hospitals, initiate insurance claims, and track claim settlement status, alongside viewing and sharing their own environmental impact through an 'Eco Hero Certificate' feature.
A feature that shows users the environmental impact of their car being idle, including estimated CO2 emissions reduced and an equivalent number of trees planted, which users can then share directly to social networks.
Average app logins reached 12 times per month, up from an industry baseline of roughly 1.2 brand interactions a year. Users earned 7.9 times more bonus days per month on average, spent an average of 37 minutes in-app per month, 7% of users bought other insurance policies through the app, and 36% of users shared their carbon footprint savings on social media.
Industry data shows an average of just 1.2 brand interactions per year for insurance customers, since most policyholders have no reason to think about or open an insurance app outside of buying a policy or filing a claim.