A Techcrunch report said that Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai currently heads the mobile team of health insurance startup Oscar. After leaving Foursquare last year, Selvadurai came on board just last month as Oscar readies itself for a product launch in January next year.
As Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or otherwise known as Obamacare, would go into effect next year, venture capitalists like Josh Kushner Thrive Capital is betting that the health insurance sector is a new gold mine for tech entrepreneurs. Kushner believed it so much as his company had recently received USD40 million in investment pledges in its recent funding. Although there has been no disclosure about what Oscar really is and what it could do, Techcrunch speculated that the Oscar product would offer a more customer-friendly experience on cost transparency.
Sources told Techcrunch that Oscar has been awarded license by the state of New York as a health insurance operator. Its initial USD29 million investments went to capital reserves in compliance with state regulations as the startup would not be a front-end for existing health insurers. The type of services that Oscar would provide would only be catered to New Yorkers first.
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