After nearly 25 years in the general insurance industry, Arpit Agrawal is embarking on a new professional chapter, shifting his focus from corporate leadership to building new opportunities in insurance distribution, strategic partnerships and technology-led business models.

Agrawal recently concluded an 11-year tenure with HDFC ERGO, bringing to a close a significant phase of his corporate career. Over the years, he has worked across distribution, partnerships and customer-facing insurance businesses, building experience across multiple segments of India’s general insurance market.

His professional journey includes associations with leading insurance companies such as Bajaj Allianz General Insurance, Tata AIG General Insurance, Reliance General Insurance, Future Generali General Insurance, L&T General Insurance and HDFC ERGO.

Drawing on his experience across agency, original equipment manufacturer (OEM), small and medium enterprise (SME) and other distribution channels, Agrawal now aims to explore opportunities that can make insurance distribution more scalable, accessible and responsive to evolving customer needs.

As part of this next phase, Agrawal will associate with Fouress Insurance Broking in a senior growth and strategic partnerships capacity. Working closely with its leadership, he will focus on exploring new distribution opportunities, developing strategic alliances and evaluating emerging insurance business models. The association is also expected to create opportunities for collaboration with entrepreneurs, insurers, brokers, technology platforms and other participants across the insurance ecosystem.

“After nearly 25 years in the industry, I see this transition as an opportunity to build beyond traditional organisational boundaries. The focus now is on working with the industry to develop distribution models that are simpler, more digital and more accessible, while reflecting how customers increasingly discover, evaluate and purchase insurance,” said Agrawal.

His areas of interest include digital and embedded insurance, technology-enabled distribution, WhatsApp-based and assisted digital customer journeys, MSME insurance penetration, emerging-market expansion, strategic partnerships and evolving models such as parametric insurance.

As Arpit Agrawal embarks on the next chapter of his professional journey after 25 years in the general insurance industry, his focus is on exploring innovative insurance solutions that can make protection more accessible, relevant and impactful for underserved segments of India.

A key area of interest is parametric insurance, which offers the potential for faster, event-based payouts triggered by predefined parameters, particularly in the face of climate-related risks and weather uncertainties. Alongside this, he aims to explore new-age insurance distribution models that can bridge the protection gap in rural India, supporting farmers, rural entrepreneurs, small businesses and vulnerable communities.

By bringing together industry experience, technology-led distribution and innovative risk solutions, Agrawal hopes to contribute to a more inclusive insurance ecosystem—one that goes beyond traditional insurance boundaries and makes financial protection accessible to those who need it most.

“The next chapter is about creating, collaborating and contributing. I believe there is considerable scope to rethink how insurance reaches customers, particularly in Tier 2 and Tier 3 markets. By bringing together the right partners, technology and distribution capabilities, we can explore more effective ways to close accessibility gaps and make insurance more relevant to a wider section of the market,” Agrawal added.

As the insurance industry continues to evolve alongside changing customer expectations and digital adoption, Agrawal’s next phase reflects a broader shift towards partnership-led growth, new distribution opportunities and more accessible insurance solutions.

About Arpit Agrawal

Arpit Agrawal is a senior insurance professional with nearly 25 years of experience in the general insurance industry. His expertise spans insurance distribution, strategic partnerships and customer-facing insurance businesses. During his career, he has been associated with several leading general insurance organisations in India and has worked across diverse distribution ecosystems. He is currently focused on exploring new opportunities in insurance distribution, technology-enabled business models, entrepreneurship and strategic industry collaboration.

Media Contact

Arpit Agrawal
Insurance Industry Leader | Growth & Distribution Strategist | Exploring the Next Frontier in InsurTech, Parametric Insurance & Rural India

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arpit-agrawal-14498614

Email: arpit.agrawal@justinsurance.in

When a River Becomes a Witness to History

‘The River Remembers’ by Omi Yadav is an ambitious debut novel that attempts something unusually expansive: to tell the story of Bihar across 2,300 years through the lives of ordinary people who live beside its rivers, roads, institutions and changing landscapes. Published in September 2026, the novel moves from Pataliputra in 300 BCE to a Delhi street in April 2026, connecting vastly different historical moments through one enduring presence—the river.

The novel begins with Devadatta, a wood-carver in ancient Pataliputra, whose intimate observations of the Ganga establish one of the book’s central ideas: places remember even when people do not. From there, Omi moves through the burning of Nalanda, the age of Sher Shah Suri, colonial exploitation, Independence, floods, migration, industrialisation and the mass movement of labour towards Indian cities.

What distinguishes the novel is its decision to approach history through individual lives rather than through kings, battles and political chronology alone. A monk running from the burning Nalanda library with manuscripts, a road-builder’s wife travelling alongside her husband, families confronting displacement, workers leaving Bihar for employment and a young girl cycling to school become parts of a much larger historical narrative.

The recurring metaphor of the river gives the book structural unity. It flows while empires disappear, roads are constructed, libraries burn and generations migrate. The river does not interpret these events; it simply continues. The people, however, remember—and it is their memories that give history its emotional weight.

The final section brings the centuries-old narrative sharply into the present. Priya, a fifteen-year-old girl from Darbhanga, cycles to school each morning, representing education, mobility and the possibility of choosing to remain. Her story is placed alongside the account of Pandav Kumar, a twenty-one-year-old from Khagaria who worked as a food-delivery worker in Delhi and died in April 2026. The epilogue uses his story to confront the prejudice and vulnerability surrounding migrant workers from Bihar.

Omi Yadav’s prose is reflective and cinematic, often lingering on landscapes, objects and small human gestures. At times, the historical sweep can feel deliberately weighty, but that breadth is also the novel’s defining characteristic.

Ultimately, The River Remembers is less a conventional historical novel than an extended meditation on memory, migration, belonging and survival. Its central question—whether people should trust the land or leave it—echoes across generations. The river keeps moving; what changes is the meaning people attach to the journey.

D J Borkotoki’s Against the Colluding Sky brings together stories of identity, conflict, memory, displacement and the ordinary lives caught in extraordinary circumstances.

The Northeast of India has often entered public consciousness through headlines—insurgency, ethnic tensions, borders, migration and political unrest. Yet behind every headline are individuals whose lives cannot be reduced to statistics or political narratives. D J Borkotoki’s Against the Colluding Sky: Unfinished Stories of Northeast India and Beyond attempts to bring those human stories to the foreground.

Published in September 2026 by Bigfoot Publications, the book is a collection of ten stories, including “Songless Birds,” “Tonight,” “Kindred Scourge,” “Lifestyle,” “James Bond (Local),” “The Portrait (Circa 1990),” “The Blue Sky,” “Atma,” “Wings of a Grasshopper,” and “Down South.”

The opening story, “Songless Birds,” provides an effective entry into the collection. Set at a conference in Delhi discussing the Northeast, it brings together bureaucrats, academics, journalists and others attempting to understand a region described repeatedly as unique and misunderstood. At the centre of the conference is a painting of three birds—an Adjutant Stork, a hornbill and a white pelican—sitting on one branch but looking in different directions.

The image gradually acquires symbolic significance. While the speakers discuss ethnicity, land, borders, identity and violence, the story raises another question: who gets to speak for the Northeast? The young anthropologist Simon challenges the simplified idea that communities in the region are merely prone to conflict. His observations introduce questions of cultural identity, insecurity and the fear of losing heritage.

In “Tonight,” the narrative moves from a conference hall to a remote village, where Dimbeswar Kalita lives through the disappearance of his seventeen-year-old son, Rajen. As rumours connect the boy with an armed outfit, the father becomes trapped between fear, social suspicion and an agonising uncertainty about his child’s fate.

Across the collection, Borkotoki repeatedly turns towards people living on the margins of larger events. His characters carry memories, regrets, anxieties and unanswered questions. The stories are therefore not simply about the Northeast; they are about people negotiating history, identity, family and circumstance.

The author’s note describes the book as growing from memories, reflections and stories accumulated through family, friendships, reading and years of writing for newspapers and journals.

That personal foundation gives Against the Colluding Sky its central quality: these are stories that resist easy conclusions. They remain, deliberately, unfinished—much like the lives they portray. Intense, often funny and sometimes gripping, Against the Colluding Sky is a compelling read.