Published: 3/18/2021
Good afternoon, it's Thursday and we're back with the news today. We've got PolicyBazaar raising capital to expand into Middle Eastern markets and Amazon making a direct investment in a consumer brand.
➡️ Online Insurance platform PolicyBazaar has raised another $75M in a new tranche led by Falcon Edge Capital. This brings the company's total raise to $630M over the years in a cap table that also includes SoftBank's Vision Fund & Tiger Global. The company plans to use the capital to expand in the UAE and other Middle Eastern markets.
➡️ PolicyBazaar serves as an aggregator that lets consumers compare and buy different insurance policies (across multiple categories). India is also a severely under-penetrated market when it comes to insurance and insurance distribution still only makes a small part of the larger insurance market.
➡️ Within the online insurance distribution market, PolicyBazaar controls 90% of the market according to analysts at Bernstein. The company also sells loans, credit cards and mutual funds products online and sells over 1M policies a month in a market that's poised to grow.
➡️ The company also has plans to go public soon (2021? 2022?) so this round could also potentially be seen as a Pre-IPO round if the company lists later year.
2. http://bit.ly/2OMzwpd: MyGlamm raises $24M in a Series C round
➡️ This seems like a great year for omnichannel beauty brands especially with the upcoming Nykaa IPO and SUGAR raising a Series C. And now we have MyGlamm raising their Series C in a round led by Ascent Capital, Amazon and Wipro Consumer, which values the brand at $100M.
➡️ Amazon has done a couple of direct investments in India before- insurtech company Acko, along with BankBazaar and Housejoy but this seems to be the first brand the US eCommerce giant has directly invested in.
➡️ The company also acquired the POPxo digital community last year and brought on their investors on their cap table- Chiratae Ventures, Kalaari Capital, and Neoplux Venture Capital. The company only aimed to raise Rs. ~110 Cr, but went up to Rs. ~175 Cr in a round that attracted a lot of attention (as a lot of early and late stage deals are doing these days).
➡️ With all the newer beauty brands raising significant capital in the recent past (Purplle, SUGAR and MyGlamm), I'm interested in seeing who makes it to the next stage of growth faster and how the space plays out overall.
Feedback & ❤️ always appreciated BONUS (Tweet of the day): https://twitter.com/VFDigital/status/1372013645144616962
If you received this as a forward, consider subscribing here 👉🏽 keepingupwithindia.com/api/wa