[Funding alert] Bay Capital invests in Policybazaar ahead of IPO

India-focused investment management firm Bay Capital has become the latest overseas fund to invest in Gurugram-based PB Fintech (formerly, Etechaces Marketing and Consulting), the holding company of insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar.

Bay Capital has completed a secondary transaction, ahead of Policybazaar's plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 12-15 months. PB Fintech became a unicorn in 2018 when it raised $200 million in a Series F round led by SoftBank.

Siddharth Mehta, Founder and CIO of Bay Capital, said: 

"We are excited to partner with the excellent management team of PB Fintech, which is transforming the way insurance is bought in India. Customer centricity has been the heart of their proposition and has helped them become the platform of choice for customers.

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"The company’s tech-focused approach has been a key enabler in ensuring better transparency, decreasing costs, and increasing adoption in the country over the last 12 years. We believe PB Fintech is well-positioned to become one of the largest financial services ecommerce companies in India and is poised for a strong growth trajectory in the years to come.”

Bay Capital, which manages money on behalf of institutions and endowments based in the US and Europe, has built a portfolio of franchises straddling growth opportunities in India in consumer, digital, finance, outsourcing, and health segments.

“We’ve known Bay Capital and Sid for quite some time, and are very happy to have them join us for this next phase of Policybazaar’s journey," said Yashish Dahiya, Founder and Group CEO of PB Fintech. "Bay Capital is a long-term investor and we see them playing a key role as Policybazaar heads towards the public markets in the next 12-15 months.”

PB Fintech is the holding company for Policybazaar, an online insurance comparison portal, and Paisabazaar, an online credit comparison portal.  Apart from playing the role of online comparators and aggregators, the two portals claim to have been instrumental in driving online penetration in their respective financial services segments and hold pole position in terms of both business generated and online traffic.