Unicorn report: PolicyBazaar - an InsurTech disruptor
Founded in 2008 and achieving ‘unicorn’ status in 2018, PolicyBazaar is one of the world’s greatest InsurTech success stories so far.
The company’s website acts as an aggregation platform to provide customers with information and prices on a range of insurance products.
In fact, PolicyBazaar was created as an attempt to solve what seemed to be a prevalent issue in the domestic Indian market: “There was lack of information on products, transparency was missing, mis-selling was rampant, there was a high lapse rate of insurance policies and consumers felt a general apathy towards the insurance industry.
“Insurance companies made profits from policy surrender charges and the entire industry was mired in murkiness,” said the website.
Solving a problem in the market
Since its inception, PolicyBazaar has expanded to become a marketplace for insurance policies, provided insurance to over 250mn households in India and disrupted the insurance monopoly previously held by banks (it claims to now process 25% of India’s life policies).
In a sense, the company is less technologically sophisticated than other InsurTech unicorns. However, it is also a clear example of how a customer-focused philosophy combined with market insight and intelligence can reap significant rewards.
With year-on-year growth maintained at 100% since it started, 100mn visitors a year and 400,000 policies sold each month, the company is making significant progress towards its goal of enabling a healthy, well-protected India.
Going public
Details provided by Yashish Dahiya, CEO and Founder, in a recent article revealed that PolicyBazaar is intending to put together an IPO (initial public offering) in 2021. The company is currently valued in excess of USD$3.5bn.
“The IPO size will be about $500mn,” said Dahiya. “We have global interest and will raise in the coming weeks [for the pre-IPO financing].”
Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, many are predicting that the time for InsurTech to flourish has arrived, as concerned customers look for quicker, easier and better ways to protect theirs’ and their families’ finances.
It will be up to leaders like PolicyBazaar to apply its successful formula to alleviate the situation, shape the future of the industry and innovate new ways of helping policyholders.
