Jungle Ventures makes first insurtech bet with investment in Turtlemint

Invictus Insurance Broking Services, which runs insurtech platform Turtlemint, on Tuesday said it has raised an undisclosed amount from Singapore-based Jungle Ventures as part of a growth funding round. 

With this, the Mumbai-based company has raised $46 million in the Series D funding round, as per a statement.  

The company in November 2020 raised $30 million as part of the same round. The round, which was led by Menlo Park, California headquartered venture capital firm GGV Capital, saw new investors including American Family Ventures, MassMutual Ventures and SIG. Returning investors Sequoia Capital India, Blume Ventures, Nexus Venture Partners, Dream Incubator and Trifecta Capital had also participated in the round. 

The company will use the fresh capital to boost insurance product distribution and innovation in India, the statement said. 

“We have been focusing on empowering our PoSPs (point of sale persons) with technology, which has enabled them to advice the right products at all points of time. We would continue to focus on spreading our distribution to the remotest part of the country and further deepen our presence in the existing locations,” Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, co-founder and CEO of Turtlemint, said in the statement.  

Due to the pandemic, the overall awareness and demand for health and term life insurance has increased, he said. Turtlemint saw 2.5X growth in its business -- the growth estimate is based on an internal study for advisors conducting business digitally as against advisors issuing via offline mode. 

“Our PoSP partners have made digital sales very effective in pandemic times. We thank Jungle Ventures who has joined us in the journey to create a million successful financial entrepreneurs in the next 3-5 years,” Mahyavanshi said. 

Anand Prabhudesai, co-founder, Turtlemint, added, “The funds raised would be utilised to further strengthen the Turtlemint platform by adding user-friendly new-age insurance products, developing engaging content for customer education, and enabling digitisation across all models of distribution – traditional and new.  We have an endeavour to serve 50M+ customers in the next five years and we are on track to achieve the same.” 

This is Jungle Ventures’ first investment in the insurtech space. Its portfolio of internet and software firms in India include Moglix, Livspace, Paysense (exited to Naspers-owned PayU), Builder, TookiTaki and BookMyShow. 

“Micro entrepreneurs are the backbone of the Indian economy and we see Turtlemint playing a huge role in making them more digitally inclusive. India lags behind in improving the depth and breadth of insurance coverage and the recent initiatives by the government are in the right direction... We are excited for the opportunity to help Dhirendra and Anand scale the business to further heights,” Amit Anand, founding partner, Jungle Ventures, said in the statement. 

Founded in 2015 by Mahyavanshi and Prabhdesai, Turtlemint has a network of over 1,00,000 insurance advisors that cater to more than 1.5 million customers in more than 5,000 metros, cities and towns. It has partnered with over 30 Indian insurance providers, including HDFC Life Insurance, HDFC Ergo, ICICI Lombard, New India Assurance, Reliance General Insurance and new age companies such as Go Digit.