ETechAces Marketing and Consulting, the parent company of online financial services marketplaces PolicyBazaar and PaisaBazaar, is reportedly in advance talks with IDG Ventures and True North for raising around ₹128 crore in the latest funding round.
If the deal goes through, it will mark the first investment from private equity firm True North in the digital internet space. True North will be investing around ₹96 crore, while IDG Ventures is set to invest remaining ₹32 crore in the company.
The company is reportedly looking for more domestic investors to join this round. This is to ensure that the company meets the 51 percent domestic investment criteria laid out by the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irda).
Explaining the reason behind the fund raising, a person aware of the development said:
While the company has turned profitable, the founder believes now is the time to grow aggressively. Another reason behind raising capital is that what will Flipkart and Paytm do with the capital they have raised, and they could look at this space.
It is expected that the fin-tech startup will use the coming funds to expand PolicyBazaar and PaisaBazaar to new geographies and to expand its business into newer categories of products apart from loans, credit cards and insurance.
PolicyBazaar was founded in 2008 by Alok Bansal and Yashish Dahiya. It is India’s one of the prominent online life insurance and general insurance aggregator. It claims to be specialized in making a comparative analysis of the insurance products of various insurance policies based on price, quality and key benefits.
On the other hand, PaisaBazaar, founded in the year 2014, is one of India’s largest online destination for all kinds of loans, credit cards, and other financial products.