Insurtech start-up OneAssure raises Rs 5 crore pre-seed funding from angel investors

Representative image

Insurtech start-up OneAssure on December 14 said that it has raised Rs 5 crore in a pre-seed funding round from a host of angel investors.

The investors include Arun Venkatachalam of the Murugappa family, currently part of the leadership team at CG Power Systems, Dell Technologies’ Asia and Japan President Amit Midha, Cloudnine Hospitals co-founder and MD Rohit MA, and Dunzo co-founder Dalvir Suri.

The list also features Suryoday Microfinance Co-Founder Ganesh Rao, who is the CEO at New Opportunity Consultancy, and International Finance Corp executive Santoshkumar Vasudevan.

OneAssure was founded in October 2020 by Ruchir Kanakia and Shreyans Maini. Kanakia has previously worked with Cuemath and Instamojo and Maini's last stint was at Hotstar.

The start-up has positioned itself as an insurance marketplace selling health insurance and other related services and the platform is functioning in beta mode. The company said it is on course to achieve Rs 7.50 crore in premiums processed by the end of FY21.

“Just a small fraction of Indians have health insurance. With the pandemic highlighting its importance, demand has soared from big cities to small towns. But existing insurance distribution networks have not adjusted. The fundraise helps us scale to focus on these new customers using trained partners and partnerships,” said Kanakia.

OneAssure said that it received the direct broker licence from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) in August 2021.

Insurance penetration in India was pegged at 4.2 percent in FY21, according to Swiss Re’s sigma world insurance report. This is in contrast to the global average of 7.4 percent.

“OneAssure’s approach at helping the end-customer, from selecting a policy to claims, got us excited about the opportunity. Health insurance has become the need and there are very few tech-focused intermediaries with this tech-enabled focus on a customer,” Dell's Amit Midha said.

After the pandemic, there has been an increased awareness among Indians to buy insurance and insurtechs have seen a growth in funding as well as usage.

Digital insurance sales make up less than 2 percent of overall insurance premiums in India but consumer surveys indicate that increasingly 30-40 percent of customers prefer to search and buy insurance online, according to a report by CLSA.

Of the 14 fintech unicorns (a privately held entity with a valuation of $1 billion or above) in India, three are from the insurance space. Two of those – Digit and Acko – emerged as unicorns only in 2021.