Insurtech startup InsuranceDekho on October 11 announced that it has raised $60 million in a mix of equity and debt in an ongoing Series B founding round from Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas Cardif’s insurtech fund managed by Eurazeo, Beams Fintech Fund and Yogesh Mahansaria Family Office.
This development comes a few months after the startup raised $150 million in a Series A round in February. Though the company declined to comment, according to the sources in the know, the new round will value the startup at over $500 million.
Existing investors TVS Capital, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Avataar Ventures also participated in this round.
“The funding round is still in progress, and it could become bigger. We haven't decided on the exact size of the Series B round yet, but we've seen a lot more interest and demand from investors than we originally expected – about two to three times more,” Ankit Agrawal, founder and CEO of InsuranceDekho told Moneycontrol.
The fresh capital will be utilised to boost marketing activities, expand its distribution presence in the Indian hinterland, scale up its tech platform, explore inorganic growth opportunities, and for new initiatives like Reinsurance to continue democratizing and revolutionizing the insurance landscape in India.
To drive its expansion plans into the Indian hinterlands, InsuranceDekho has been aggressively acquiring other players including Mumbai-based SME focused insurance distributor Verak and IRSS, one of the largest institutional insurance distributors in Gujarat state, in April 2023.
Agarwal said," Our aim has always been to make insurance accessible and user-friendly for all Indians, and this funding will allow us to accelerate our efforts, reach more customers, and innovate further in the Insurtech space. The insurance sector in India is at the cusp of a tech-backed revolution and I believe InsuranceDekho is well positioned as one of the pioneers leading this transformation.”
Founded by Agrawal and Ish Babbar in 2017, InsuranceDekho has seen significant growth and is on track to achieve Rs 3,600 crores premium this financial year while targeting to have 2,00,000 agent partners on its platform by Mar’24. Currently, the Insurtech player is present in more than 1,500 regions, covering 98 percent of pin codes across the country. It gets over 90 percent premium from tier 2 and beyond regions. InsuranceDekho has served six million customers to date.
InsuranceDekho is the insurance arm of the car-selling unicorn CarDekho.
Agarwal said, “We will continue to grow 2x YoY as we have been doing for the past few years. We aim to grow our non-motor businesses like MSME, launch new product categories and get into the Reinsurance broking business.”
According to Agarwal, Merger & Acquisition (M&A) is a big and core part of InsuranceDekho’s growth strategy. “We continue to explore inorganic opportunities in various areas like new product categories, geographical expansion, emerging and niche technologies, etc. Currently, we're evaluating our strategic options and are open to opportunities that will help us grow our company,” he said.
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