BimaPe, a Mumbai-based insurtech startup, has shut down within a year of its formation and will be reborn as Verak, its founder and chief executive officer Rahul Mathur announced on Wednesday.
"BimaPe is shutting down. We've had an incredible 10 months building the Wallet product -- we had the privilege of speaking with 500 plus users, maintained an organic 30% month on month growth rate for six plus months and built some industry-first features," he said on Twitter.
“After careful consideration and research, we have decided to shut down our BimaPe platform," he added.
In a blog on Medium, he said that the team started working on Verak in July. “We won’t be disclosing details of the same until March 2022 or later. The product recently crossed the $20,000 monthly net revenue milestone,” Mathur said.
Founded in October 2020, BimaPe aimed to simplify insurance for working professionals. Y Combinator-backed BimaPe had last raised $545,000 in a round led by Lightspeed India Partners, Titan Capital, iSeed, and Gemba Capital, in June this year.
It had plans to use the funds to further develop its product, expand its team and invest in user acquisition.
BimaPe was “was unable to reach its market-product fit metrics set in March 2021”.
The decision to shut was also based on customer feedback. “Plus we came across a bigger opportunity in the form of Verak,” Mathur said.
He laid down three mistakes by the team while executing BimaPe – thinking that product vision is product strategy, mistaking a design problem for an engineering problem and stretching themselves too thin.