Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund bets on insure-tech startup Riskcovry

By Narinder Kapur

  • 21 May 2020
Credit: VCCircle

UMBO InsurDataTech Systems Pvt. Ltd, which operates insurance-technology startup Riskcovry, has raised funding in its pre-Series A round led by Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund.

Other investors who participated in the round include Varanium Capital and Better Capital. However, the company did not disclose the amount it raised.

The Mumbai-based startup will use the funds to scale its product-market fit and enable access to more enterprise customers across segments, Riskcovry said in a statement.

It will also enhance its technological infrastructure and look to acquire talent for its product, data sciences, growth, and sales teams, the statement added.

Riskcovry was set up in 2018 by Suvendu Prusty, Sorabh Bhandari, Chiranth Patil and Vidya Sridharan. The company says it is a ‘neo-insurer’ that provides businesses with large captive user bases ‘insurance-in-a-box’ solutions.

The startup says its platform enables the distribution of several insurance products across different types of insurers. This is made possible through its plug-and-play infrastructure that supports several distribution use cases.

“We serve our distribution partner community by essentially being that unified solution for them to do anything insurance,” the founders said in a statement, adding that their platform would allow access for purchasing and policy management and claims.

Separately, Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund principal Saras Agarwal said the fund was confident of its investment in Riskcovry because of its application programming interface (API) approach and focus on enterprise customers.

Riskcovry says some of its clients include banks, financial technology firms, e-commerce and digital companies, non-banking financiers and supply chain players.

Investors

The Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund was set up as an early-stage venture initiative by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad’s CIIE.CO. The fund says its investments range from the idea to Series A stage, in sectors such as finance, health and education.

Last month, Bharat Inclusion Seed Fund participated in a $15 million (around Rs 113.7 crore) Series A funding round in Setu, a fintech startup that focusses on API-based infrastructure. The round was led by Falcon Edge and Lightspeed Venture Partners US.

In December last year, it participated in a Rs 36 crore (around $5.06 million) Series A funding round in neo-banking startup Kaleidofin Pvt. Ltd. The round was led by financial inclusion-focussed impact investor Oikocredit.

Varnaium Capital, meanwhile, marked the first close of its debut fintech-focused venture capital fund in October last year. The Varanium NexGen fund seeks to raise a total of Rs 200 crore ($28.1 million), managing partner Aparajit Bhandarkar told VCCircle at the time. Apart from Riskcovry, the fund’s portfolio also includes real estate-focussed technology company Homeville Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

Better Capital is a seed fund that has invested in startups such as financial technology startups Open and Khatabook and e-mobility startup Yulu.

Last month, it led pre-seed funding round in location analytics startup Locale.ai. The funding round also saw participation from notable angel investors such as Myntra co-founder Raveen Sastry and Fusion Charts co-founder Pallav Nadhani.

Also last month, Better Capital led an investment in Penbound Partners Pvt. Ltd, which operates mobile-based multimedia interactive platform Plop.