Digit Insurance becomes India’s first unicorn of 2021

BENGALURU: Three-year-old insurance tech start-up Digit Insurance is India’s first unicorn of 2021. According to the Bengaluru-based fintech firm, it has hit a valuation of over $1.9  billion after it closed a fresh funding round from existing investors including A91 Partners, Faering Capital, and TVS Capita. 

These companies have a combined stake of 11 per cent in the firm. Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa’s FairFax holdings along with Kamesh Goyal, founder of Digit Insurance, hold the rest of the company’s stakes. The firm claims to have  doubled its valuation in 2020. 

Digit Insurance’s portfolio covers health, travel, property,  and even mobile insurance, a segment not typically covered by major players. The start-up leverages cloud and AI technology to settle claims digitally through smartphone self-inspections and audio verifications. With a usebase of 15 million, the insurance firm said that its profits spiked during FY21 even though the segment didn’t grow much. 

“In an almost-recession like year for most businesses and when the insurance industry itself grew by 0.1 per cent, Digit grew by 31.9 per cent, earning a premium of $186 million (approximately Rs 1,359.72 crore) in April-December period (FY21),” Digit Insurance said in a statement.

The company added that it launched various initiatives during the pandemic, including a Group Insurance policy for Covid-19 and seven other vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria, filariasis (payable only once in a lifetime), kala azar, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis and even the zika virus. 

Digit Insurance is also a part of the sandbox initiative of India’s insurance regulator IRDAI,where the companies can be test new products on a pilot basis for six months.