InsuranceDekho Acquires Sequoia-Backed Verak

InsuranceDekho, an insurance policy aggregator platform has acquired Verak, a Mumbai-based SME insurance distribution firm to strengthen its presence in the micro-business insurance space.

InsuranceDekho will be onboarding the Verak team, including founder Rahul Mathur.

"Through its unique partnership led model, Verak has made deep inroads into the untapped micro-business insurance space, bringing thousands of small shopkeepers under the insurance umbrella for the first time and registering 30% MoM premium growth every month," InsuranceDekho said in a statement. It did not reveal the terms of the deal.

Verak, which is backed by investors such as Y-Combinator, Sequoia and LightSpeed, has been in operation for just about 13 months. It was known as by the name of its primary offering BimaPe prior to that, which was shut after the founder Mathur said the company failed to reach the desired product market fit.

"Their expertise in SME insurance will complement our deep distribution network in Bharat and our industry-best tech stack. This strategic move will enable us to consolidate our position in the SME insurance vertical and enhance our product offerings," Ankit Agrawal, co-founder and chief executive officer of InsuranceDekho said.

In February this year, InsuranceDekho raised over Rs 1,200 crore ($150 million) in a Series A round, marking one of the largest ever such rounds by an Indian insurtech company.

Speaking to BQ Prime then, Agrawal had said that they are open for acquiring good assets at the right price. "If we come across 10 such assets, we're open to acquiring all 10. From a size perspective, we're agnostic. We could acquire something that's pre-Series A to Series A, say a $10-$20 million startup."

Gurugram-based InsuranceDekho was founded in 2016 and incubated within the IPO-bound unicorn CarDekho. The holding company for InsuranceDekho is Girnar Insurance Brokers Pvt., which was granted a direct broker license by the IRDAI in 2017.