Digital insurer Acko raises $65 mn from Binny Bansal, RPS Ventures, others

With this Series C funding, Acko has totally raised $107 mn. It had earlier raised $30 mn in one of the largest seed rounds among Indian start-ups, and $30 mn in Series B funding

Digital-native general insurer Acko has raised $65 million in its Series C financing round from Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, RPS Ventures (led by Kabir Misra, ex-managing partner at Softbank) and Intact Ventures Inc, the corporate venture arm of Canada’s largest property and casualty insurer.

Existing investors such as Amazon, Accel, SAIF and TechPro Ventures have also participated in the fund raising.

The money will support company's rapid growth. "Insurance is a capital intensive sector and as the company grow, we will be raising more capital in compliance with the guidelines of the regulator," said Varun Dua, Founder and CEO, Acko.

He added that Binny Bansal’s experience in scaling a technology-first company will prove extremely helpful in the next leg.

Binny Bansal said that technology-led insurance is expected to play a significant role in growth of the under-penetrated insurance sector in India. “Acko is the pioneer of digital-native insurance and I am delighted to partner in its exciting growth journey”

“We continue to be impressed by Acko’s focus on data-led innovations in the insurance sector that are solving for important customer needs in this sector. We are always excited to work with companies like Acko that are led by missionary founders and management teams and we remain committed to investing in technology-backed innovations that address real customer problems,” said Amit Agarwal, SVP and Country Head, Amazon India.

With this latest round of Series C funding, Acko’s total funds raised stand at $107 million. Previously, Acko raised $30 million in one of the largest seed rounds in the Indian start-up ecosystem, and later raised Series B funding of $12 million led by Amazon.

Founded by Varun Dua in 2016, Acko General Insurance. It addresses insurance needs across multiple touch-points in daily lives of the “digitally-savvy” with customer centric product design, instance-based products, customised real-time pricing and instant claim verification and settlement.

Acko’s differentiated go-to-market has inherent advantages over traditional models. The company uses a direct-to-consumer approach for distributing motor insurance, allowing for favourable risk selection and superior underwriting. Acko also offers innovative and bite-sized insurance products such as rider insurance, mobile and appliance protection, ticket cancellation etc in partnership with 15+ leading players in the internet ecosystem such as Ola, Amazon, redBus, Zomato and UrbanClap. In a short span of 12 months of operations, the company has distributed insurance policies to over 20mn unique customers.

The company is backed by Amazon, Accel, SAIF, Intact Ventures, RPS Ventures, Binny Bansal - co-founder of Flipkart, Narayan Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures, Swiss Re, Transamerica Ventures, Kris Gopalakrishnan – Co-founder of Infosys, Atul Nishar – Founder & Chairman of Hexaware Technologies, Ashish Dhawan of ChrysCapital, Hemendra Kothari of DSP Blackrock, Rajeev Gupta, veteran investment banker and Founder of Arpwood Capital, Subba Rao of NuVentures and Venk Krishnan.