INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
India PolicyBazaar, which runs a digital insurance business of the same name and a lending marketplace calledPaisaBazaar.com, is the latest
company to join SoftBank $100 billion Vision Fund after it announced a new funding round of over $200 million.
The deal was led by the
Vision Fund with participation from existing investors includingInfoEdge, the company behind jobs platformNaukri.com
The startup other investors count Softbank, Temasek, Tiger Global and True North, but an announcement fromPolicyBazaar didn&t specifically
mention if any of those names took place in this latest round.
This new round takes PolicyBazaar to nearly $350 million to date
The deal is another investment in India for the Vision Fund, which so far has backed OYO Rooms, Flipkart and Paytm parent One97
Communication among others.
PolicyBazaar was founded in 2008 initially as an information portal for learning about insurance and insurance
Today, the company operates its own digital insurance brand and a marketplace that aggregates and selects deal from across the
industry.
Across both services,PolicyBazaar claims to process100 million visitors in website traffic per year with a transaction volume that
approaching 300,000 per month
More broadly, the company estimates thatPolicyBazaar.com is used to purchase over 20 percent of life insurance coverage in India andseven
percent of the country retail health coverage.
Going forward, PolicyBazaar is targeting 10 million transacting customers by 2020, which it
believes it can reach by growing at acompound annual growth rate of 80 percent.
&Over the last decade, PolicyBazaar has become synonymous
with online insurance shopping in India
We believe that the Indian insurance market continues to remain massively under-developed and PolicyBazaar, supported by SoftBank capital
and ecosystem, is uniquely positioned to dramatically increase the adoption of insurance products in the country,&Munish Varma, partner at
SoftBank Investment Advisers, said in a statement.
PolicyBazaar closest ideological rival is Acko, but the two companies are
quitecontrasted.
WhilePolicyBazaar is a decade old, Acko is very much a newcomer whichhas raised $42 million since its launch some 18 months
Most recently, Ackoadded Amazon after theU.S
retail giantled a $12 million investmentthat was announced last month
In addition, Acko founder Varun Dua is a co-founder ofCoverfox, an online insurance policy aggregator that also rivalsPolicyBazaar.com.
