PolicyBazaar, an Indian online insurer has filed for IPO and expects to raise about $809 million. PolicyBazaar becomes the 4th South Asian startup to become public in the last two months. The startup reveals in the paper submitted that they will be looking for $504 million by issuing fresh shares and the rest of the fund will be collected from the sale of existing shares.
The startup is almost 12 years old and is backed by some of the big shots in the investment circle including SoftBank, Falcon Edge Capital, Tiger Global, and InfoEdge. It also plans to raise another $100 million in a pre-IPO funding round. SoftBank is expecting to sell shares worth $250 million and the founders of PolicyBazaar are issuing $52.7 million worth of shares to sell.
The users of PolicyBazaar will be able to compare and buy policies among different categories from various insurers. The users will not have to go to conventional agents. The operations of the startup are active in India and the Middle East.
In India, the people who currently have access to insurance are only a few. With the digital firms, these services could become more mainstream. The startup claimed in its papers for IPO that “India’s life insurance market is expected to grow at 18.8% p.a. to reach ₹ 31.9 trillion (US$ 425 billion) in FY2030, driven by favorable macro indicators, rising awareness towards financial products and services, digitization and simplification of products and processes, online channels for distributions, innovations, and customizations in products and favorable government policies and regulatory push”.
PolicyBazaar faces competition from Acko and Amazon in India. It also provides loans, credit cards, and mutual fund facilities on its platform.
