iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
An Indian insurance-technology platform Turtlemint has raised $30 million in a funding round led by global venture capital firm GGV Capital.
New investors American Family Ventures, MassMutual Ventures and SIG, along with existing investors Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Dream Incubator and Trifecta Capital participated in the round.
Turtlemint has 100,000 partners who are point-of-sales-persons selling insurance products.
“Due to coronavirus, there is a rise in awareness of insurance and segments like health insurance have seen a jump. The funding will help us expand this business,” said Turtlemint co-founder Dhirendra Mahyavanshi.
Mahyavanshi said the platform has an annual premium run rate of Rs 1,200 crore and growing at 70-80 percent every year.
In India, advisors act as intermediaries between the customer and the insurance companies, especially in Tier 2/3 areas. Turtlemint helps bridge this gap and digitally enables advisors to offer relevant insurance products to customers.
In addition, the platform allows for instant online issuance, making the purchase process across more than 40 insurers paperless. It also helps reduce the average turnaround time to less than 10 minutes versus the prevalent industry average of more than 48 hours.
The Turtlemint platform also has tools like mobile CRM to manage customers, a repository of video content that advisors can use for customer education, and social media marketing features for driving insurance awareness.
Mahyavanshi said that the focus will be on personal lines of business for retail customers. Turtlemint offers products in areas of car insurance, bike insurance, life insurance and health insurance.
He explained that the funding will also be used to hire additional people in the engineering team for the platform. This funding will be adequate for more than three years, according to him.
For GGV Capital, this will be the first insurtech company investment in India. Hans Tung, Managing Partner, GGV Capital, said that by developing products for the micro-entrepreneurs and the rising middle class, Turtlemint has an opportunity to have a positive impact on India’s economy.
Anand Prabhudesai, co-founder, Turtlemint, said that the platform has created an online education product with a wide range of courses on financial products, advice-based sales techniques and other soft skills. This content is now available in 7 regional languages and more than 20,000+ learners are active each month on their edtech platform.
“A lot of these are first-time advisors who are taking their first steps towards starting their advisory business. Our target is to create a million successful financial entrepreneurs over the next 3-5 years,” he added.
In January 2019, Turtlemint had closed a $25 million funding round led by Sequoia India. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners and Blume Ventures had also participated in that round.