The Latest to Join the Club of Indian Unicorns: PolicyBazaar PolicyBazaar is the first in the insurance sector to get a place in the celebrated unicorn club
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It's really a good time for entrepreneurship in India. Just days after Swiggy joined the unicorn club of India, there's another new member – PolicyBazaar. A leading online insurance aggregator in the country, PolicyBazaar has signed for an over $200 million Series F investment round led by SoftBank Vision Fund, with participation from existing investors including InfoEdge (Naukri.com).
The funding comes in for ETechAces Marketing & Consulting Pvt. Ltd, the parent company of PolicyBazaar and Paisa Bazaar.
Entrepreneur India takes a look at the insurtech industry and how Policy Bazaar took up the path to be a unicorn.
Climbing the Insurtech Chart
InsurTech, which refers to technological advancement in the insurance sector, has been touted as the next big opportunity. A PwC report even suggests that three in four insurers have predicted disruption in their sector within the next four years. However, the process has already begun.
Insurance in India has long been one hidden under the piles of files, taking time to find its place in the country as a valuable investment or gaining people's trust over the risk factors it has. However, with the advent of insurtech, the game has changed.
Started in 2008, PolicyBazaar rode on the insurtech wave early on. Today it accounts for nearly 25% of India's lifecover, and over 7% of India's retail health business. It accounts for roughly half of all internet based insurance purchase in the country and is more than doubling annually.
The Unicorn
PolicyBazaar joins the prestigious list of Indian unicorns which has other fintech players like Paytm but is the first in the insurance sector. PolicyBazaar in a statement said that from 180,000 visitors in 2008 today the website has over 100 million visitors yearly and records sale of nearly 300,000 transactions a month.
Talking about the funding, Yashish Dahiya, Co-founder & Group CEO, EtechAces. said, "We are very pleased to welcome Softbank Vision Fund on board as our stakeholder. SoftBank's culture of backing disruptive businesses and industry leaders with long-term capital investment gels well with our own values and vision of creating a transparent and empowering financial products marketplace. We hope to gain a lot from their global footprint and experience."
The company has backing from a host of investors including the likes of Softbank, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, InfoEdge(Naukri.com), Premji Invest, besides investments from other PE funds and family offices.
