Online insurance selling platform Policybazaar, which is operated by ETechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt. Ltd, is close to raising a pre-initial public offering (IPO) funding round worth around $50 million (around Rs 327 crore), Mint reported.
Existing and new investors would participate in the fresh funding round, Policybazaar CEO Yashish Dahiya told the business daily. However, he declined to give names of investors who would participate in the upcoming round.
The firm broke even in November last year and planned to go public by the end of 2018, Dahiya said.
Policybazaar earlier announced its plans for its IPO.
The pre-IPO round would help company bring in the much-needed capital as its cash reserves could last only for 10 months, shows a VCCircle analysis.
The company’s revenues grew 29% to Rs 109.5 crore for the financial year ended 31 March 2016 while its losses grew to Rs 110 crore from Rs 65 crore in the year-ago period. It expects to post revenues of around Rs 210 crore in the current financial year, Dahiya was quoted as saying.
Founded in 2008, Policybazaar has raised around $79 million in five rounds from investors including Tiger Global, Premji Invest, Steadview Capital, ABG Capital and Ribbit Capital.
Its early backers include InfoEdge, Intel Capital and Inventus Capital, according to VCC Edge, the data research platform of News Corp VCCircle.
“Policybazaar had the first mover advantage in its segment and has emerged as a market leader with 70% market share. It will do one more round before its IPO,†Kanwal Rekhi, co-founder of Inventus Capital, told VCCircle during a recent interaction.
Inventus invested in Policybazaar in 2013. Rekhi mentioned that online insurance selling platform would be one of the VC firm’s portfolio firms that would go public in the next 18 months.
Dahiya had earlier spoken about raising around $100 million through a Nasdaq listing at a valuation of around $700 million in the second half of 2018. However, the company has not yet finalised where it would list.
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