Go Digit General Insurance Ltd, which is backed by Canadian investment firm Fairfax, has raised Rs 606.7 crore ($85 million) from a clutch of institutional and individual investors including Indian cricketer Virat Kohli.
Mid-market private equity firms Faering Capital and TVS Capital and venture capital firm A91 Partners together brought in Rs 200 crore each.
Kohli and his actor-wife Anushka Sharma pooled in Rs 2.5 crore.
In July 2018, Go Digit had raised $45 million (around Rs 310 crore then) from Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa’s Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. At the time, the company had said it would use the money to invest in new products and expand its distribution network across the country. So far, Toronto-based Fairfax has invested over $140 million in the company.
The insurance platform was founded in 2016 by industry veteran Kamlesh Goyal, who was working with Germany’s Allianz prior to establishing the startup. While Goyal functions as Go Digit’s chairman, former Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd president Vijay Kumar is its chief executive officer and principal officer.
The company provides insurance services for several product verticals, including several types of automobiles, health and employee health, travel, home, shop and consumer good insurance. Some of the companies it has partnered with include Flipkart, Paytm, Cleartrip, PolicyBazaar, and Tanishq, among others, for products related to mobile phones and flight delays.
Another online insurance platform that has received investor attention in recent months is Mumbai-based Acko. In November last year, it raised $20 million (around Rs 143.50 crore) in funding from Binny Bansal, taking the Flipkart co-founder’s total investment in the company to $45 million.
Other insurance platforms that operate in similar verticals include ETechAces Marketing & Consulting Pvt. Ltd, the operator of online insurance selling platform PolicyBazaar.com and lending marketplace PaisaBazaar.com. It raised $200 million (Rs 1,360 crore) in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund in June 2018.
In March that year, VCCircle reported that online insurance provider Coverfox’s parent, Glitterbug Technologies Pvt. Ltd, raised Rs 49 crore ($7.6 million) from Dutch insurance, pension and asset management firm Aegon NV.
The headline and text of this article have been updated to include additional information.
