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Coverfox’s parent company, Glitterbug, is out to raise $50 million in new round


NEW DELHI: Glitterbug Technologies, which owns and operates insurance aggregator Coverfox, has hit the market to raise a fresh round of equity financing, estimated at $50 million.

The Mumbai-headquartered company is in talks with several potential investors, particularly from China, the US and the UK, according to sources briefed on the developments, indicating that the Series-D round of equity financing could stretch to $60 million.

Coverfox, which has also mandated Chinese investment banking major Industrial and Commercial Bank of China to scout for potential investors, could be valued at $150-200 million, a significant uptick from its last round of funding, which closed in April 2018, the sources cited above, said. “The new round could see the entry of two new investors and is likely to close over the next two months,” one of the sources cited above told ET on the condition of anonymity.

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The six-year-old company, which competes with the likes of SoftBankbacked PolicyBazaar, had closed a $22 million Series-C round, which was led by International Finance Corp and US-based insurance giant Transamerica. Premanshu Singh, chief executive of Coverfox, declined to comment.

Till date, the company has raised about $45 million across rounds. Stage and sector-agnostic investment firm SAIF Partners; Catamaran Ventures, the personal investment firm of Infosys cofounder Narayana Murthy and Accel Partners, who had earlier invested in the company, are also expected to participate in the new round.

If successful, a good portion of the cash raised by Coverfox is likely to go towards, marketing and general corporate purposes, further development of its agent-facing app Coverdrive, and bulking up its data sciences team, among others.

In an earlier conversation with ET, Singh had said the company, which has about 50,000 insurance agents on its platform, was looking to onboard 500,000 agents over the next 12-15 months. The company was also looking to expand into home and property and cyber insurance segments by the end of the current calendar year.

The company was also looking to expand into home and property and cyber insurance segments by the end of the current calendar year. Currently, Coverfox offers insurance policies across motor—two and four-wheeler—insurance, term life and unit-liked insurance plans and health segments.

At the time, Singh had said that the company was recording $110-120 million worth of premiums on an annualised basis on its platform as of December last year, about a four-fold jump from the year before.

Coverfox reported revenue of Rs 12.41 crore, and loss of Rs 33.74 crore in FY18. This compared to revenue of Rs 6.12 crore and net loss of Rs 31.85 crore in the year ago.





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