Nova Benefits, a corporate health insurance platform, on Thursday said it has raised $10 million as part of its Series A funding round led by Susquehanna International Group (SIG) and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Existing investors Multiply Ventures, Better Capital and Titan Capital also participated in the funding round, said Nova Benefits in a statement.
The company will use the funds to expand its team across engineering, product management, sales and customer relationships.
The Series A funding comes less than five months after it had bagged its seed funding round of $1 million led by Multiply Ventures, Better Capital and Titan Capital earlier in April.
Digital insurance platforms have attracted significant investor interest in the past years and the space has become intensely competitive.
Not only has the market leader PolicyBazaar surged ahead and filed for its over $800 million initial public offering (IPO) this year, but a bunch of other players such as Digit Insurance, RenewBuy and Turtlemint have raised funding in the past year despite the pandemic.
Nova Benefits was founded in 2020 by Saransh Garg and Yash Gupta, from IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, respectively.
Earlier, Garg had worked with consulting firm BCG and venture capital firm Accel, and Gupta worked at Samsung.
The startup has built an employee benefits platform centered around corporate health insurance. Users can access their insurance e-cards, find cashless hospitals and make claims on Nova Benefits’ platform.
Nova Benefits claims that it recorded over 10-fold growth in its business in the last one year despite the pandemic.
The company has over 150 clients including venture capital funded startups such as Dream 11, CoinDCX, Snapdeal, Zenoti and Yulu Bikes.
It also has a direct insurance broking license from the regulator Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) that allows the company to distribute insurance products from all insurers in India.
Anant Vidur Puri, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, noted that employee wellness is a nascent, under-penetrated but rapidly growing and evolving industry in India and technology will play a critical role in accelerating this growth.
The corporate health and wellness market in India is valued at $7 billion currently and is expected to rise to $18 billion by 2025, according to a Redseer report.
SIG is a US-based global investment, trading and technology firm. Earlier this year, it co-led an investment in edtech startup Doubttnut. Last year, SIG invested in digital gaming startup Mobile Premier League (MPL).
Bessemer had closed its new fund at $1.85 billion in 2018.
The global investment firm had planned to invest roughly 30% of the total corpus in international markets (India and Israel). Its investments in India include Cashify, Remedinet, MyGlamm, Lentra, LivSpace, DocsApp and PharmEasy.