- General
- November 9, 2019
- 4 minutes read
Tencent Said To Purchase 10% Stake In Policybazaar
Tencent CEO Pony Ma Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune According to a Bloomberg report, Tencent has purchased a 10% stake in Policybazaar,…
Tencent CEO Pony Ma
Photograph by Vivek Prakash/Fortune
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According to a Bloomberg report, Tencent has purchased a 10% stake in Policybazaar, an Indian online insurance aggregator that notably raised funding from the Softbank Vision Fund last year. According to Bloomberg, Tencent paid $150 million for the 10% stake, valuing the company at $1.5 billion. Tencent didn’t actually make a direct investment into the company, but purchased half of a stake held by famed tech investor Tiger Global, according to Bloomberg. This entails Tiger Global, a New York-based investment firm that has backed and reaped profits from several high-profile tech companies, is the one on the receiving end of the transaction and not Policybazaar itself.
Tiger Global seems to have reaped good profits on its Policybazaar bet, having been known to have invested less than $100 million altogether in the company. Selling just half of its stake for $150 million indicates a healthy profit on its investment and possibly more profits from its remaining stake. Talks of Tiger Global looking to exit part of its stake in Policybazaar actually first came to light earlier this year.
Tencent purchasing a stake in Policybazaar doesn’t seem surprising, given its history as an investor in several Indian startups. Tencent has been sort of an aggressive investor in Indian startups, having scooped up substantial stakes in companies like Ola, Byju’s and Swiggy. Tencent isn’t alone in the court of backing Indian startups, as other tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, and Alibaba have purchased stakes amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in several Indian startups.
Policybazaar, for context, is an online insurance aggregator, meaning it curates insurance offers from several sources and in turn offers them to customers to compare and choose from. The company is one among several startups that are looking to disrupt the dominance of state-owned or bank-promoted insurance in an insurance market that’s projected to quadruple over the next decade from a current $60 billion, according to the Indian government’s Brand Equity Foundation.
According to Crunchbase data, Policybazaar has raised more than $300 million in funding till date.