Policybazaar enters the unicorn club with $200 million funding

NEW DELHI: Policybazaar, which raised more than $200 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund on Monday, is the latest Indian startup to achieve the unicorn status.

The online financial services portal run by EtechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt. Ltd has been valued at more than a billion dollars, the company said on Monday.

Existing Indian investors other than Premji Invest have all participated in the current round, according to the company.

EtechAces, which runs Policy Bazaar and Paisabazaar.com, counts Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, Premji Invest as existing investors.

“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. We hope to gain a lot from their global footprint and experience,” Yashish Dahiya, co-founder and chief executive said in a statement.

The company said that the growth in insurance purchases digitally will enable it to grow at an annual average rate of 80% over the next three years to a total of 10 million transacting customers by 2020.

“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,” said Munish Varma, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers.