Delhi-based D2C Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd, which operates online insurance aggregator RenewBuy.com, has raised $9.2 million (Rs 60 crore) from Amicus Capital, a mid-market growth capital fund.
This was Amicus Capital’s first investment out of its maiden $86 million fund, which had hit its first close in December 2016.
Zanskar Advisors was the investment banker on the transaction.
“We are highly impressed with RenewBuy’s differentiated and capital-efficient approach to finding a unique digital solution for insurance distribution. With a strong and experienced management team, Amicus Capital is committed to catalysing RenewBuy’s transition into a highly successful online insurance platform over the next few years,†said Mahesh Parasuraman, partner, Amicus Capital.
Launched in 2015, RenewBuy works on a point-of-sale partner model and primarily operates in the motor insurance sector. The company, which claims to have serviced over 200,000 customers, now intends to grow aggressively by expanding into new geographies, and adding new product categories such as health, accident and term life.
“RenewBuy’s unique digital agent model has delivered sharp month-on-month growth in the last two years to become one of the leading digital insurance aggregators. Given the size of market, we see huge scope for continued growth and it was important to partner with a strong institutional player like Amicus Capital who understands our category space and shares the same vision on how to grow the business,†said Balachander Sekhar, co-founder and CEO, RenewBuy.com.
In November 2015, the startup had raised Rs 3.3 crore ($500,000) in an angel round led by Singapore-based principal investment and advisory firm Mount Nathan Advisors Pte. Ltd.
Sekhar, who had previously worked with MetLife, Reliance Retail Insurance and American Express, had launched RenewBuy along with Indraneel Chatterjee and Sandeep Nanda. Chatterjee, an alumnus of Symbiosis International University, has more than a decade of experience in the insurance sector with stints in PNB Metlife and Reliance Retail. An alumnus of Guru Nanak Dev University, Nanda had earlier worked with Guavus, Aricent Group and Infosys.
RenewBuy competes with ETechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt. Ltd-owned Policybazaar, which had raised Rs 500 crore in a Series-E round last week.