PolicyBazaar turns Unicorn with $236 Mn fresh round led by SoftBank

Soon after Swiggy, online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar has joined the coveted club of a 'Unicorn' in India. The Gurugram-based company has raised around $236 million in its Series F round of funding led by SoftBank.

According to Yashish Dahiya co-founder of PolicyBazaar, the total round including primary and secondary investments is about $236 million (primary: $206 million and secondary: $30 million) of which the large party, i.e., around $150 million came from SoftBank, reports ETNow.

The investment round also saw a participation from the company's existing investors InfoEdge, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, and PremjiInvest. In a separate report, Mint has confirmed PolicyBazaar hitting the $1 billion valuations through a company statement.

Dahiya's further revealed that his mother and father-in-law also invested around Rs 1 crore in their personal capacity.

As far as the PolicyBazaar's valuation is concerned, Dahiya said that his company isn't bothered about that. However, the company's valuation has seen a decent 2X jump from the last valuation after it had raised Rs 500 crore led by global asset management firm Wellington Management, private equity firm True North and IDG Ventures India.

Regarding the company's much-rumoured IPO aspiration, Dahiya explained that the company is not going public anytime soon. With the backing from SoftBank, PolicyBazaar is planning to invest a majority of its fund in the healthcare space.

According to the aforementioned Mint report, the company will launch a new unit - DocPrime, a marketplace for doctors connecting with patients.

Actually, PolicyBazaar aims for a bigger opportunity in the health-insuring segment.

It sets to strike tie-ups with clinics, diagnostic centres, and hospitals to launch OPD-specific insurance products and in future, will have its own health insurance products under DocPrime.

Founded in 2008, PolicyBazaar is an insurance policy comparison website run by EtechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt. Ltd. With this round, it has raked in over Rs 2,600 crore risk capital from multiple investors.

It claims to clock around 300,000 transactions on a monthly basis and also broke even in the financial year 2016-17 with a total revenue of Rs 220 crore.