True North offloads partial stake in PolicyBazaar

Homegrown private equity firm True North has announced a partial stake sale in ETechAces Marketing and Consulting, the company that owns online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar. The valuation of the company and the stake sold was undisclosed. 

The Mumbai based private equity firm had invested in PolicyBazaar in 2017 from its $700 million Fund V, said a statement. It holds a 3.31% stake in the company through Fund V and 2.48% through Fund VI according to data from VCCEdge. 

“Policybazaar has scripted a great success story and is truly a market leader in the insurance space. It has been the fastest growing platform for many years. We wish them many successful milestones as they continue their upward arc. Looking forward to exciting times ahead with the entire team,” Divya Sehgal, partner at True North said in the statement. 

The company which is likely to go public in 2021-22 had raised $47.4 million in the second tranche of its Series F round from SoftBank earlier this year. Media reports also mentioned a secondary component of $80 million, which could not be ascertained independently at the time. 

Earlier this year, Inventus Capital offloaded 1.67% stake in the company for $25 million according to reports. In 2019, Tiger Global sold 10% stake in the company to Tencent at a valuation of $1.5 billion for ETechAces. Tiger Global held a total of 21% stake in the company.

Founded in 2008 by Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal, ETechAces, the holding company, also operates lending marketplace PaisaBazaar. In September 2019, PolicyBazaar also founded Zphin to provide digital solutions to the BFSI segment. 

PolicyBazaar works with over 40 insurers on its platform and serves 8 million insurance buyers. Other investors in the company include InfoEdge, Steadview Capital, ABG Capital, Ribbit Capital and others.