ICICI Lombard General Insurance Company Ltd has agreed to acquire the software and assets of Unbox Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates the Autoninja software for automobile dealers.
The insurer will acquire the SAIF Partners-backed company’s assets for Rs 225 crore (about $31.8 million at current exchange rates), ICICI Lombard said in a stock-exchange filing.
The acquisition will help ICICI Lombard enhance its technological infrastructure for product distribution and servicing, and handling claims and customer relationship building, the filing added.
The company will also use Unbox’s assets to create an efficient renewal process for insurance policies. It expects the transaction to be completed by the end of December.
Autoninja was founded in 2013 by Kshitij Saxena, Akhil Gupta, Ashis Nayak and Rahul Bendre. Saxena is an alumnus of IIM-Bangalore and IIT-Kanpur. Its products include Ninja CRM, a suite of customer relationship management software for auto dealers.
Its other products include AccessBox, a car dealership mobile app platform that synchronises user and vehicle data; Exporium, a sales tablet that offers inter-brand car comparisons; and Blinktag, a tool for car dealers that enables customers to share photos of their purchased cars.
In June last year, Autoninja had raised an undisclosed sum of money from SAIF in a round that valued it at Rs 147 crore. SAIF had also invested around Rs 31.6 crore in Unbox Technologies in October 2015.
ICICI Lombard was set up in 2001 after the Indian insurance industry opened up to private players.
Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa-backed Fairfax Financial Holdings owned a 21.91% stake in ICICI Lombard just before the insurer went public in September 2017.
Fairfax had sold a 12% stake in the insurer’s initial public offering. Last month, it sold its remaining stake in the insurer, scoring modest returns overall and ending its 18-year investment in the company.
