Jungle, Sequoia, others invest $46 mln in insurance distributor Turtlemint

Online-based insurance advisor Turtlemint has raised USD 46 million (about Rs 335 crore) from a clutch of investors led by Jungle Ventures.

Other investors in the latest round include GGV Capital, American Family Ventures, Mass Mutual Ventures and SIG as well as existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Dream Incubator and Trifecta Capital, the company said on Tuesday.

Turtlemint, started in 2015, has a Point of Sale Persons (PoSPs) network of over 1 lakh who serve over 1.5 million customers across 5,000 locations. The company said it will use the money from the series-D funding round to widen its distribution reach and also to develop more innovative products.

For the Singapore-based venture capital fund Jungle Ventures, this is the first investment in the insurance tech space in the country, its founding partner Amit Anand said.

Turtlemint co-founder Dhirendra Mahyavanshi said they have been focusing on empowering PoSPs with technology which has enabled them to give advice on the right products to consumers.

We would continue to focus on spreading our distribution to the remotest parts and further deepen our presence in the existing locations, he said.

Another co-founder Anand Prabhudesai said the fund will be utilised to further strengthen the platform by adding user-friendly products, developing engaging content for customer education, and enabling digitisation across all models of distribution, both traditional and new.

He said they are planning to serve over 50 million customers over the next five years.

Turtlemint is a hybrid platform that seamlessly combines the offline and online insurance distribution model and has partnerships with over 30 insurers including HDFC Life, HDFC Ergo, ICICI Lombard, New India Assurance, Reliance Generaland Godigit.

Jungle Ventures' Indian portfolio includes Moglix, Livspace, Paysense, Builder, Tookitaki, and Bookmyshow.

It also recently led a series-B funding round of USD 10 million for Betterplace, the blue-collar workforce management platform. Overall, it has invested in over 35 companies across eight countries in Southeast Asia and India.