Policy Bazaar investment arm to raise $200 million

ETechAces Marketing & Consulting, owner of India’s leading insurtech brand PolicyBazaar.com and lending marketplace PaisaBazaar.com, said it has raised $200 million in a Series-F investment round led by SoftBank Vision Fund. Existing investors, including InfoEdge (Naukri.com), also participated in the round. The company didn’t disclose details on the quantum of stake sold. Yashish Dahiya, Co-Founder and Group CEO, EtechAces said, ” SoftBank’s culture of backing disruptive businesses and industry leaders with long-term capital investment gels well with our own values and vision of creating a transparent and empowering financial products marketplace.” According to Boston Consulting Group’s estimates, digital influence on insurance purchases will grow to 50 percent for life insurance and 75 percent for general insurance by 2020. This translates to nearly Rs 1.2 lakh crore of new insurance premium being digitally influenced by that time. PolicyBazaar believes this will enable it to grow at a CAGR of 80 percent over the next three years, achieving 10 million transacting customers by 2020. Munish Varma, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said that over the last decade, PolicyBazaar has become synonymous with online insurance shopping in India. “We believe that the Indian insurance market continues to remain massively under-developed and PolicyBazaar, supported by SoftBank’s capital and ecosystem, is uniquely positioned to dramatically increase the adoption of insurance products in the country,” Varma said.