Telecommunications and internet group SoftBank has led a $238m series F round for India-based online insurance marketplace PolicyBazaar and its sister company, financial product comparison platform PaisaBazaar, the Economic Times reported today.
Classified listings operator Info Edge provided $45m of the funding through an undisclosed special purpose vehicle, increasing its stake in ETechAces, the owner of both platforms, from 9% to 13%. It is in talks to buy $32m of stock from another investor, PremjiInvest.
SoftBank invested $150m through its Vision Fund, taking a stake of about 15% in ETechAces in the process, and the round was filled out by private equity firm True North. ETechAces revealed yesterday that it had raised more than $200m without disclosing an exact figure.
Launched in 2008, PolicyBazaar is an online platform where insurance policies from a range of providers can be accessed, compared and bought. It is responsible for almost 300,000 transactions a month and received nearly 100 million visitors in 2017.
PaisaBazaar was set up in 2014 and performs a similar function for lending and investment products. It has more than 300 such products on offer from some 75 partners.
The valuation of the series F round is double that at which the company last raised money, in a $77m round in October 2017 that included True North, PremjiInvest, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, IDG Ventures India and Wellington Management.
Yashish Dahiya, ETechAces’ chief executive, told the Economic Times: “A number of investors had expressed strong interest in leading the round, but there simply wasn’t enough space for all.
“We wanted to get SoftBank on board for the unparalleled depth of their disruptive knowledge and experience that they have gathered.”
Info Edge – also known as Naukri – backed PolicyBazaar at seed stage and joined Inventus Capital Partners and chipmaker Intel, an existing backer now identified by ETechAces as a previous investor, to provide $5m of series B funding in 2013.
Tiger Global combined with ETechAces’ existing investors to add $20m of funding the following year, before being joined by PremjiInvest, Ribbit Capital, Steadview Capital and ABG Capital for a $40m series D round in 2015.