PolicyBazaar raises $75 m to fund UAE expansion

PolicyBazaar has raised $75 million in funding led by US-based Falcon Edge Capital. The company will deploy the capital to expand its services in the UAE and West Asia.

Neeraj Gupta, CEO at PolicyBazaar UAE, said the firm plans to build motor, health and life insurance product categories in the UAE region. “So far, we have sold sum assured worth $100 million through our term life insurance products and we intend to scale this figure to $1 billion in the next 12 to 18 months,” Gupta said according to media reports. Investors are understood to have infused the funds in the online insurance aggregator’s UAE arm.

Gurgaon-based PolicyBazaar that turned into a unicorn after SoftBank led an over $200 million financing in the company in 2018 is gearing up to get listed on the exchanges in the next 12-15 months. The size of the initial public offering could reportedly well be Rs 4,000 crore. Earlier this month, new investor Bay Capital backed PB Fintech, the holding company of PolicyBazaar in a secondary transaction.

The company counts Temasek, Steadview Capital, Ribbit Capital and True North among its other investors.

In an interview to local media last year, Yashish Dahiya, co-founder & group CEO at PolicyBazaar had said that the firm expected revenues worth `1,000 crore for financial year 2020-21. “And while PolicyBazaar will be profitable, the overall company will still have about $5 million of losses..” he had said.

The company claims that every second term life policy is bought through its platform. It says that it accounts for 25% of India’s life cover.

“We aspire to bring the powerful solution that we offer customers and manufacturers in India, to the UAE. The coming financial year, we aim to scale five times in size and scale,” Dahiya said in a statement, according to reports.