You all are aware about PolicyBazaar which provides information across products such as medical, term life, travel or motor insurance, low prices ULIPS and other investment products. But did you ever got confused that what is PolicyBazaar Business model and how PolicyBazaar earns?
PolicyBazaar makes money from the insurers for the products purchased through its platform and the fee varies from product to product.
Let’s understand properly what services they provide and what is the revenue model of the company.
Table Of Contents
- About Founder and CEO.
- History
- Services
- How Policy Bazaar became a big player in the market?
- How does Policy Bazaar earn?
- Future Aim
- Conclusion
- FAQs
About Founder and CEO
PolicyBazaar was founded in June 2008, by Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar, headquartered in Gurugram. It is a subsidiary of EtechAces Marketing and Consulting.
Key Persons
Alok Bansal prior to PolicyBazaar, he worked as a senior Manager in First Europa, Corp. strategy in Mahindra & Mahindra and as a business manager in iGate Global Solutions. He is a co-founders and Director of Policy Bazaar. He is an is an alumnus of IIM Kolkata.
Avaneesh Nirjar is one of the co-founders of PolicyBazaar. Prior to PolicyBazaar, he worked with companies like Marico Industries, AT&T India, GE Capital International Services, Cendant ISO, Heroites and First Europa. He is an alumnus of IIT Kharagpur and also did MBA from Birla Institute of Technology.
Yashish Dahiya is one of the co-founders of the company. He had done his bachelor degree in Engineering from IIT Delhi, and post-graduation Diploma in Management from IIM Ahmedabad. He joined Bain&Co. as a consultant in 2001. Later, he became managerial director at ebookers.com.
In 2005, he founded First Europa, a global online insurance broker and he expanded his business in 9 geographical locations. He also founded paisabazaar.com, which provides the market for fixed deposits and loans. He stepped off as a CEO of the company PolicyBazaar and new CEO, Sarbvir Singh was appointed in February 2020.
Sarbvir Singh is the new CEO of PolicyBazaar after Yashish Dahiya stepped off as a CEO in February 2020. In addition to that, he has good experience in working with companies like Emerson Electric, Citi Bank, Homeshop18, Network18, JP Morgan Private Equity Group.
Sarbir Singh also co-founded Hercules Capital, a company investing institutional and private client assets in Indian stock market. He is an alumnus of IIT Delhi and IIM Ahmedabad.
Key People of the company: –
| Co-Founders | Yashish Dahiya Alok Bansal Avaneesh Nirjar |
| Chief Executive Officer | Sarbvir Singh |
| Chief Financial Officer | Alok Bansal |
| Chief Business Officer | Tarun Mathur |
| Chief Technology Officer | Rahul Agarwal |
| Chief Operating Officer | Avaneesh Nirjar |
History
The idea of PolicyBazaar flashed in Yashish Dahiya’s mind as his father was once cheated by an insurance agent.
PolicyBazaar was started as an insurance comparison website which was an informational portal to learning and knowing all legal process and papers which are involved in buying an insurance.
Later the website expanded and became a marketplace for insurance policies.
The company provide wide range of insurance like life insurance, health insurance, motor insurance, travel insurance as well as group plans.
PolicyBazaar also launched its application for Android and IOS in 2015.
The company also developed an AI chatbot PBee to improve customer satisfaction.
Here, all the funding round of the company are as follows: –
| Round | Date | Amount |
| Series A | March 2013 | $4.6 Million |
| Series B | April 2013 | $5 Million |
| Series C | May 2014 | $20 Million |
| Series D | April 2015 | $40 Million |
| Equity | October 2015 | $20.6 Million |
| Series E | October 2017 | $77 Million |
| Series F | June 2018 | $200 Million |
| Series G | November 2019 | $150 Million |
| Equity | January 2020 | $25 Million |
The total funding received by the company is $42.2 Million.
Services
PolicyBazaar is a marketplace for almost all insurance like life insurance, health insurance, motor insurance, travel insurance, group insurance, etc. The company offers more then 250 insurances by 50 insurance companies.
Moreover the company provide full support in buying a insurance policy, provide services on its application like insurance premium calculator, instant renewal of insurance policies, claim assistance, raise a issue etc.
As per their business model, PolicyBazaar had tied up with insurance broker, which help them in gathering information such as price, benefit, insurance cover, etc. directly for customers so that it is easier for customers to compare. PolicyBazaar don’t charge anything for these services.
How Policy Bazaar became a big player in the market?
PolicyBazaar business model was unique and they were the first to come-up with this and the company got the first mover advantage in providing online insurance services.
The company helps choosing the best insurance policy for customer by helping them comparing the policy with other policies which subsequently gain customer trust, that they will provide good service to the customers.
Many things help them to capture a market. The company spends a lot of its revenue in initial years in marketing. Furthermore, it contains all type of marketing like TV advertisements, hiring brand ambassador, digital advertisements, Newspaper advertisements and many more medium.
Marketing Strategy
The company focuses much on television advertising because it gives them better result as an e-commerce company. Naveen Kukreja, the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) said, “We spend most of our marketing budget on TV ads which is almost 85% of total budget. And rest 10%-15% is spend on digital advertisement.“
He added, “We had tried experimenting other medium like Radio ads, outdoor ads, but ROI from TV ads is always high in compare to other and it worked better for us.” He added, “The humor of Kapil Sharma is prominent”
The company’s campaign insight which really helped them grow and gain customer was by 2 most popular TV ads.
Firstly, it was by Kapil Sharma’s “Ullu mat bano”.
Secondly, it was by Suhasini Mulay’s, which highlighted on comparing policies, and made a prospect among the user mind that it is easy and reliable source for getting information about insurance policies and buying it from there.
The company has changed its tagline from “Stop. Compare and Save” to “Compare Buy and Save”, as they had seen that people only come on their website to search and compare the policies, but they don’t buy from there. So as to persuade them for buying they started this campaign.
How does Policy Bazaar earn?
PolicyBazaar business model and revenue model is very simple. They have a tie-up with more than 50 insurance company broker which provide them all the details about the insurance policy which are be listed on the website.
Furthermore, they got paid for listing an insurance company’s policy on their website.
They also make money by generating leads for the insurers, advertising and policy sales and get commission for every policy they sell. The commission percentage is based on the policy.
Till 2011, 85% of PolicyBazaar’s revenue came from lead generation and advertising and the rest 15% came from policy sales. But now, 85% of revenue comes from e-commerce or policy sales.
The company is regulated by a government body Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India. The company is registered as an insurance web aggregator under the Insurance Web Aggregator Regulations, 2017.
Here is a video which will help you understand the revenue model of PolicyBazaar
Future Aim
The company future aims to underwrite premium worth Rs 10,000 crore by 2020.
Company had also targeted to expand its customer base to 1 crore by 2020. The targeted revenue is Rs 1500 crore by 2020.
Company is also planning to expand outside India. Company is in negotiations to launch its IPO soon.
Here is a table which will help you understand more about the company: –
| Founded | June 2008 |
| Founder | Yashish Dahiya Alok Bansal Avaneesh Nirjar |
| Headquarter | Gurugram, Haryana, India |
| Services | Insurance comparison and policies buying platform. |
| Number of employees | 10,001+ |
| Website | policybazaar.com |
Conclusion
PolicyBazaar has a very unique business model and it is the first insurance policy web aggregator in India. PolicyBazaar’s business model helped them grow which lead them to capture more than 70% of market.
It started as an insurance policy comparing website then expanded itself and started selling policies online which contains travel insurance policy, life insurance policy, group insurance policy, etc.
They were the first to come up with this concept and now they are enjoying as a market leader and which helped them to reach to a revenue of Rs. 310.3 Crore.
FAQs
Policybazaar is an Indian insurance aggregator and a global financial technology company.
Policybazaar is an aggregator of insurance products. They redirect to insurers platform for sale of policies and earn commissions based on traffic they bring to the insurer website and the number of conversions.
It is subsidiary of EtechAces Marketing and Consulting.
It is co-founded by Yashish Dahiya and Alok Bansal in June 2008.
PolicyBazaar provides vide variety of insurance policies from 50 insurance companies. It provides car insurance, life insurance, two-wheeler insurance, term insurance, retirement plans, etc.
If this helped you learn anything, do let us know in comment section.
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