This year has seen a tremendous rise in the numbers of the unicorn family of India, and insurance startup Acko has become the latest entry in the list after raising $255 million in its new funding round, elevating its valuation to $1.1 billion.
The round was led by private equity firms General Atlantic and Multiples Private Equity and included participation from Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Lightspeed Growth, as well as existing investors Intact Ventures and Munich Re Ventures. The Bangalore-headquartered startup has now raised $450 million to date.
Acko thus becomes the 34th Indian firm to become a unicorn this year and the second insurance startup to reach the milestone. According to the startup, the proceeds from the funding round would be utilized towards expanding its auto insurance segment and micro-insurance products across travel, appliances, and gadgets, as well as investing over $150 million in growing its health insurance segment.
It also plans to hire more talent across technology, product, and data science roles and may acquire more insurance businesses over the next year to strengthen its product service integrations with more primary care providers and across garages and workshops for the auto insurance vertical.
Founded in 2016, Acko is known to offer auto, health, and travel insurances, and has teamed up with the likes of Amazon, MakeMyTrip, Ola, Urban Company for distributing bite-sized insurance covers. Today, it has over 70 million customers and has a run rate of nearly $150 million in premiums, and provides corporate insurance to 500,000 employees across 150 corporations.
Acko has a goal to increase these numbers to 1.5 million employees across 200 corporations in the next six months, and have gross premiums worth ₹1, 200 crores by the end of December.
