Kolkata, Dec 7 (IANS): Aditya Birla Health Insurance, a joint venture between Aditya Birla Group and South Africa based MMI Holdings Ltd., is looking at a 8-10 per cent share in the country's health insurance market in the next four to five years, a top official of the company said on Wednesday.

At present, the health insurance market size for the health insurance vertical is Rs 27,000 crore.

"We aim at expanding the Rs 27,000 crore category. We would be happy if we will be able to get a 8-10 per cent market share of the health insurance segment in the 4-5 years' time," said company's CEO Mayank Bathwal.

He also said the insurer would like to be among top five health insurance players in the next five years.

The group holds 51 per cent stake in the new venture while South African financial services company has the balance 49 per cent stake.

The new firm has injected Rs 250 crore capital, he said.

The new entrant in the health insurance will have multi-channel distribution model across agency, broking, bancassurance, direct marketing, online channel and more. The agency channel will start with nine branches in seven tier-I cities. "We would like to expand to 100 cities in 2-3 years," Bathwal said.

The health insurance penetration in India is very low. "Less than three per cent of retail population has some form of health cover. In the US health insurance penetration is 77 per cent while in China, the same is 35 per cent," said Aditya Birla Financial Services Ltd's Chief Marketing Officer Ajay Kakar.