Digital insurance startup Acko strengthens top team with four new hires

Mumbai-based digital insurance platform Acko has made a number of appointments across departments like human resources, marketing, partnerships and operations-claims to strengthen its management team.

Bhupendra Joshi, former Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and JPMorgan Chase executive, will lead the human resources team. Joshi has also worked with news aggregator Dailyhunt in the past. 

Ashwin Ramaswamy has joined Acko as head of partnerships. He has worked with Bharti Airtel, Sistema Shyam Teleservices and Jubilant Retail besides running a consumer technology startup named Mubble. 

Kavita Chowkimane, who has worked at Dell and Portea, will join as the vice president of marketing. Brijesh Unnithan, former head of India business of car rental and subscription startup at Zoomcar, will be heading the operations-claims department at Acko. 

“These are all experienced leaders with a proven track record and a combination of diverse skill sets,” Ruchi Deepak, co-founder of Acko, said. “They are passionate about our mission, complement the current team and also align with our culture.”

Acko was founded in 2016 by Varun Dua after leaving insurance brokerage Coverfox, a platform he co-founded with Devendra Rane.

It operates as an independent general insurance company, offering its services through a digital platform. It provides personalised insurance products based on user behaviour, as well as general and auto insurance.

The company claims to use a direct-to-consumer approach for distributing motor insurance, allowing for favourable risk selection and underwriting. Acko also offers what it calls microinsurance products, which include rider insurance, mobile and appliance protection and ticket cancellation. 

Some of the companies with which it has partnered for such products include Ola, Amazon, redBus, Zomato and UrbanClap.

In the last 12 months of operations, the company claims to have distributed insurance policies to over 20 million unique customers.

In March this year, Acko raised $65 million (Rs 452.3 crore then) in its Series C round of funding from a clutch of new and existing investors. New investors who came on board in the round included Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal, RPS Ventures, which is managed by the former managing partner at SoftBank Kabir Misra, and Intact Ventures, the strategic venture arm of Intact Financial Corporation, considered Canada's largest provider of property and casualty insurance.

In May 2018, e-commerce giant Amazon and Narayan Murthy-led Catamaran Ventures participated in a $12 million funding round for the digital insurance platform.

Its other investors include Accel, SAIF Partners, Swiss Re  Transamerica Ventures and angel investors Ashish Dhawan, Kris Gopalakrishnan, Hemendra Kothari, Atul Nishar, Rajeev Gupta, Venk Krishnan and Subba Rao.

It acqui-hired car retailing platform VLer Technology last month.