Nova Benefits Pvt Ltd, a corporate health insurance platform for employees, has raised an undisclosed amount from Indian-American entrepreneur and investor Naval Ravikant-backed AngelList Early-Stage Quant Fund, the company said.
With the funding round, the Bengaluru-based company becomes the first investment of AngelList Early-Stage Quant Fund in India, a data-based algorithmic fund.
In December last year, the US-based crowdfunding platform AngelList, which connects startups to angel investors, had marked first close of its $25 million quant fund, focussed on investing in early-stage data-driven fund to invest in early-stage startups.
Nova Benefits plans to use part of the funds to set up an Analytics Division to track hiring and employee wellness trends, leveraging data access provided by AngelList Quant Fund.
Founded in 2020 by Saransh Garg and Yash Gupta, from IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, respectively, Nova Benefits enables corporate firms to avail customised health insurance plans for their employees and add additional health benefits around physical and mental health.
In September last year, Nova Benefits had raised $10 million as a part of its Series A funding round from Susquehanna International Group (SIG), Bessemer Venture Partners, Multiply Ventures, Better Capital and Titan Capital.
The primary factors for startups to get chosen for funding on the AngelList platform is the volume of early-stage investment and hiring stats. Investors also look at indicators like the background of applicants and number of applicants when making this assessment, Nova Benefits said in a statement. Further, Nova Benefits’ hiring volumes have consistently been on par with American company DoorDash (now a billion dollar company), when it was an early stage startup, it added.
“B2B (business-to-business) insurance traditionally comes with a ton of manual work because of frequent changes in employee rosters. This also makes the onboarding experience for new employees sub-par. Furthermore, given the need for the hour on providing physical fitness and mental wellness programs by HR teams, managing multiple vendors becomes even more challenging...This round of funding will help us expand our wellness offerings on the platform in terms of product management, engineering, sales and customer success teams,” said Yash Gupta, Chief Technology Officer and Co-founder, Nova Benefits.
Since its launch, Nova Benefits claims to have onboarded more than 200 companies, and over 100,000 members on its platform. Some of the companies that Nova Benefits claims to count as clients are Snapdeal, Pharmeasy, Dream Sports, Yulu Bikes, Chumbak and Dealshare.
Saransh Garg, CEO & Co-founder of Nova Benefits said, “Our mission at Nova is to build happier and healthier workplaces. We’re doing so by making health benefits easy to use and personalised. Our employee wellness platform is centred around corporate health insurance. We ensure we take care of people when they're hospitalized but also prevent them from falling sick in the first place. At Nova, our goal is to cover 10 million people in India by 2025.”
Abraham Othman, PhD, who heads the Quant Fund's investment committee said: “The Quant Fund is thrilled to be an investor in Nova Benefits. We believe that exceptional outcomes require exceptional people, and the volume and quality of Nova's job applicants ranks among the very top of startups globally, not just in India.
AngelList Early Stage Quant Fund is anchored by WorldQuant Ventures, a global quantitative asset management firm, founded and managed by Igor Tulchinsky. Two Sigma Ventures, KAMCO Invest, Plexo Capital, Tom Tunguz of Redpoint, and AngelList founder Naval Ravikant, will also be Limited Partners (LPs) for the fund.
San Francisco-based AngelList was founded in 2010 by Ravikant and Babak Nivi who first launched an email list to help connect startups and the syndicate programme was launched in 2013. In 2016, the group appointed Somani, former Delhi chapter lead of LetsVenture and a member of the Indian Angel Network, to lead its operations in India.
AngelList claims that in 2021 alone, funds and SPVs (special purpose vehicles) on the AngelList Venture platform invested in 56% of all top-tier early-stage US deals. The company also claims that nearly two million users apply for startups on its platform every quarter.