InsuranceDekho debuts SaaS solutions firm Heph for insurance distributors

Ankit Agrawal, co-founder, InsuranceDekho.
Ankit Agrawal, co-founder, InsuranceDekho.
Summary

  • Heph’s website goes live today. The platform has been in the works for over 18 months and has already onboarded over 100 insurance distributors as clients.

Gurugram-based insurtech startup InsuranceDekho has launched Heph, an affiliate software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm, that will offer digital solutions to help insurance distributors in India manage operations, top executives at the company told Mint.

Heph, which offers services ranging from front-end customer interfaces to back-end systems, goes live with its website on Monday, 26 August.

Ankit Agrawal, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of InsuranceDekho, said the new affiliate company has been bootstrapped. 

This marks a departure from the group’s usual approach, as CarDekho and InsuranceDekho have collectively raised at least $750 million from marquee investors like Peak XV Partners, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, TVS Capital Funds and LeapFrog Investments, among others.

Also read | InsuranceDekho appoints Avendus to help raise around $150 mn

“They (Heph) broke even from day one and have been Ebitda (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) positive since the start," said Agrawal.

The platform will cover insurance products within health, life motor and group insurance, and will also provide businesses the flexibility to co-create products, and manage and optimize their insurance offerings.

To be sure, the platform has been in the testing phase for over 18 months and has already onboarded over 100 insurance distributors, Agrawal told Mint. The company, however, did not disclose further details on its clients, but said they include banks, non-banking financial companies, brokers, original equipment manufacturers, fintechs and other digital players.

 

“Our focus now is on continuing to build and scale the business while working on onboarding new clients and offering our expertise built over the past year," he said.

Founded in 2017 by Agrawal and Ish Babbar, InsuranceDekho acts as a broker, aggregating insurance agents and helping them sell policies to customers, with a focus on tier-II cities and beyond. The new SaaS firm Heph will operate as an affiliate of InsuranceDekho.

Heph’s upscaling plans


Over the next year, Heph plans to invest in marketing and branding, with a focus to onboard more clients. “We’ve achieved a strong product-market fit, and now our goal is to broaden our market presence and deepen our engagement within the industries we serve," said Ayush Bagmar, business head of Heph, who is leading the SaaS firm’s operations.

After the initial year, Heph also has aspirations to expand globally. “Our tech stack today is built on a very agile and scalable architecture, which does not limit ourselves to any particular region. We are starting with Indian companies, but we will expand globally after the next three-four quarters," Bagmar said.

Read more | InsuranceDekho valued at $600 million in Series B round

With this, the bootstrapped affiliate entity will compete with existing players like Vymo, Turtlefin and Riskcovry, among others, that are operating within the SaaS insurtech segment and have raised external capital.

“Intermediaries, like large banks or NBFCs, have robust technology stacks which any new platform must integrate with, which has proven to be a challenge so far. Secondly, many digital tools that have been available so far were not widely adopted," said Bagmar.

He believes that despite the presence of competitors in the market, many of the challenges faced by insurance distributors remain unsolved, which Heph plans to address.

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