Flipkart founders are back in the news for some heavyweight investing that he has been doing recently. After a massive ₹100 Crore investment by Sachin Bansal in Ola (which counts in one of the largest personal investment deals done across Asia), his Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal has now invested even more — $65 Million — in fin-tech platform Acko. The round also saw participation from existing investors such as Amazon, Accel, SAIF and TechPro Ventures.
Founded by Varun Dua in 2016, Acko General Insurance, India’s first digital native insurer, offers an intuitive purchase experience, cheaper prices and stress-free claims. Acko addresses insurance needs across multiple touch-points in daily lives of the “digitally-savvy” with customer centric product design, instance-based products, customized real-time pricing and instant claim verification and settlement.
Acko’s advantage over competitors lies in its approach to consumers. The company uses a direct-to-consumer approach for distributing motor insurance, allowing for favourable risk selection and superior underwriting. Acko also offers innovative and bite-sized insurance products such as rider insurance, mobile and appliance protection, ticket cancellation etc in partnership with 15+ leading players in the internet ecosystem. In a short span of 12 months of operations, the company has distributed insurance policies to over 20mn unique customers.
“The current round of funding demonstrates the confidence investors have in us and in our ability to transform how insurance will be delivered. We are excited to put the company on a rapid growth trajectory with this round of funding. Insurance is a capital intensive sector and as we grow, we will be raising more capital in compliance with the guidelines of the regulator” said Varun Dua, Founder and CEO, Acko.
With this latest round of Series C funding, Acko’s total funds raised stands at US$107 Mn. Avendus Capital was the advisor to Acko on this fundraise. Previously, Acko raised US$30 Mn in seed funding, one of the largest seed rounds for the Indian start-up ecosystem, and later raised Series B funding of US$12 Mn led by Amazon.
The company is backed by Amazon, Accel, SAIF, Intact Ventures, RPS Ventures, Binny Bansal – co-founder of Flipkart, Narayan Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, Swiss Re, Transamerica Ventures, Kris Gopalakrishnan – Co-founder of Infosys, Atul Nishar – Founder & Chairman of Hexaware Technologies, Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital, Hemendra Kothari of DSP Blackrock, Rajeev Gupta, veteran investment banker and Founder of Arpwood Capital, Subba Rao of NuVentures and Venk Krishnan.
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