Will launch financial products beyond insurance: Ankit Agrawal of InsuranceDekho

Insurance policy aggregator platform, InsuranceDekho, has plans to venture into other financial products, including lending and credit cards, revealed Founder and CEO Ankit Agrawal. 

The CEO divulged the company’s future diversification plans during a fireside chat with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma at TechSparks 2023 in Delhi. 

“We started with motor insurance, and later non-motor products. Will we get into other products? Yes. We will get into credit cards, loans, and mutual funds, but at the time and place of our choosing. We will not do it because someone else is doing it or out of fear of missing out on an opportunity. We will do it all, but patiently,” Agrawal said.

Having raised a whopping $200 million in the last nine months, including one of the largest funding deals of $150 million closed by an insurtech firm in South Asia, InsuranceDekho doubled its operating income to Rs 96.5 crore in FY23 while reducing losses by 29% to Rs 52 crore. 

Valued at $630 million, it aims to turn profitable in the current financial year. 

The startup targets onboarding two lakh agent partners on its platform by March 2024, and claims to be on track to achieve overall premiums worth Rs 3,600 crore this fiscal.

“Hopefully, someday, we will make a company as big as Paytm,” the CEO said while speaking on diversification plans. 

On launching new products, Agrawal brimmed with confidence while talking about the tech layer and data capabilities built in-house at InsuranceDekho, which would give it a leg-up in terms of target audience and personalisation. 

“Tech is the core of what we are building. Today, if you tell us to launch a product that will cater to youth focusing on startups, who are also working as agents with us, we can cull out 20,000 specific people that can be targeted. That's the level of data capturing we do, and the data science model that we have built,” the CEO said.  

He continues, “We are confident that when we launch financial services, we will make a bigger success than what we have achieved in insurance.” 

Meanwhile, InsuranceDekho is planning to double down on the share of non-motor insurance in its revenue mix while also entering the reinsurance business. 

At present, 75% of its revenue comes from selling motor insurance, followed by other segments like fire, marine, health, travel, and pet. It has tied up with 46 large insurance companies, including LIC, which sell over 410 insurance products via the platform.  

It recently made two strategic acquisitions, including IRSS (acqui-hired) to strengthen its offline agent network in the western part of the county, and took over Verak to build a stronger presence in the SME insurance vertical. 

Become a cockroach, not a unicorn 

During the chat, Agrawal pressed on being consistent and transparent in scaling up the business, as he advised startups to look at solving a genuine problem on the ground. Funding will follow thereafter. 

“That is what worked for us,” he said.  

The founder continues, “We always have a plan A and B. The former is to consistently deliver growth on the core business. The latter is in case we are unable to meet numbers. But no matter how much planning you do, sometimes you fail. Even so, we remain transparent and tell our investors that this did not work. We never sell them false stories,” he said. 

Agrawal told founders to shred the obsession of becoming a unicorn and build a lasting business. 

“Don’t be a unicorn, be a cockroach... they can survive... We don’t want to be a company which is only surviving for a certain period of time. InsuranceDekho is being built for the next 500 years,” he concluded.