InsuranceDekho raises $150M in maiden funding round

Girnar Insurance Brokers owned InsuranceDekho has announced raising $150 million in a mix of equity and debt round. TVS Capital Funds and Goldman Sachs Asset Management led the Series A equity round, as per a statement issued by the company. 

Other investors in the round include Investcorp, Avatar Ventures, and LeapFrog Investments. A part of the round—$36.5 million—was reported in January 2023 based on filings with the Registrar of Companies. 

The company will utilise the funds to scale up its product and technology functions, expand to new markets, pursue inorganic growth, strengthen its leadership team, launch new innovative products in the health and life categories, and grow the company’s MSME insurance business, it said in the statement. 

Founded in 2016 by Ankit Agrawal and Ish Babbar as part of the auto tech platform CarDekho Group, InsuranceDekho allows consumers to compare different insurance policies based on their requirements and buy the most suitable plan for life, property and casualty insurance. Its holding entity GIBPL was granted the Direct Insurance Broker license by IRDAI in 2017.

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This also marks the 10th investment from TVS Capital Fund’s Rs 2,000 crore third private equity fund. The fund already backs Go Digit General Insurance and will continue to back insurtech companies as part of its investment thesis. The fund typically invests in financial services, business-to-business services, and niche consumer segment bets.

“Insurance is largely under-penetrated in India and is still at 4.2% of the GDP. Secondly, we have a strong insurance regulator driving growth in the space. There is a lot of room for growth in the space,” Praveen Sridhar, Partner at TVS Capital Funds told YourStory.

“InsuranceDekho is an insurance broking firm which works through an agent model—aggregating these agents. The agency or broker model is a larger market than the digital market, and insurance is a push product. The growth anticipated from Tier II and III cities for insurance will play well into the InsuranceDekho model which has a large network of agents,” he added. 

With the government’s push towards creating a single platform—Bima Sugam—for multiple insurance-related services including policy sale, renewal, and claims settlement, the penetration is only going to increase, helping intermediaries like InsuranceDekho, added Praveen.

At present, InsuranceDekho claims to be directly integrated with 46 insurance companies across India, offering more than 380 insurance products, including 175 for health and life. It plans on reaching an annualised premium run rate of Rs 3,500 crore by March 2023, it said in the statement. 

The company also competes with listed insurance intermediaries PolicyBazaar, Jungle Ventures backed Turtlemint, and others.