InsuranceDekho bags $60 million, valuation hits $750 million

Insurance marketplace InsuranceDekho has raised $60 million in its ongoing Series B funding round from Japanese financial services major Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, BNP Paribas Cardif, which put money through its insurtech fund, and Beams Fintech.

The family office of Yogesh Mahansaria, managing director of Mahansaria Tyres, a major tyre manufacturer, also participated in the round.

Along with the new investors, funds also came from existing investors TVS Capital, Goldman Sachs Asset Management and Avataar Ventures.


Also read | Decoding InsuranceDekho’s back-to-back funding rounds amidst a funding winter

Overall, the company saw a 50% jump in valuation, post the round. While InsuranceDekho did not comment on the exact valuation, sources said the round valued the company at around $700 million to $750 million. The company claims to be profitable in its core distribution business, but given its ongoing investments in new business lines, overall it is still in losses. In FY22, the last reported financials, InsuranceDekho recorded a net loss of Rs 234 crore on a revenue of Rs 1,650 crore.

Interestingly, at a time when venture money has been hard to come by, especially in growth rounds, InsuranceDekho has managed to raise two back-to-back funding rounds this year. In January, it had closed $150 million in funding, taking its overall raise to more than $200 million.

“We will use the fresh funds for some inorganic growth opportunities. We are scouting some acquisition targets which we hope to close soon,” said Ankit Agrawal, chief executive officer, InsuranceDekho. “There are conversations happening around enhancing our technology and distribution capabilities but those conversations are private as of now,” he added.

Agrawal also wants to strengthen the company’s tech capabilities and invest in marketing and brand-building with the new round.

“We are also looking to enter into reinsurance. We are in the process of applying for a composite brokerage licence from the IRDAI, which will allow us to become a broker for reinsurance policies too,” he said.

InsuranceDekho is an online marketplace of insurance products but has a strong physical presence as well. In industrial parlance, it is called POSP (point-of-sales person) business. Currently, the company has around 1.1 lakh agents in the field, and the aim is to increase it to 2 lakh by the financial year-end. It is already processing an annual premium run rate of Rs 3,000 crore and aims to double it by the end of the current fiscal.

Also read | Rivals will have to follow our model: PolicyBazaar’s Yashish Dahiya

The Gurugram-headquartered firm has designed its business in a way that enables its agents to sell insurance products in the country’s tier 2 and tier 3 cities. Almost like the Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC), which built its distribution through part-time agent networks, InsuranceDekho is building its own network to physically distribute insurance products. It sells vehicle insurance, term insurance, life insurance and some other general insurance products. It currently has around 1,900 employees.

It competes with the likes of listed company Policybazaar and venture-funded Turtlemint. Currently, Policybazaar is focused on expanding its own POSP business too.

ET wrote on June 12 that Policybazaar currently gets 42% of its overall revenue from its new business lines which includes the physical agent business.

Agrawal said he intends to take the company public by 2026-27. InsuranceDekho was launched by online aggregator of used and new four-wheelers CarDekho in 2017. The company, however, came out of its incubator and now operates independently.