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Gurugram-based Policybazaar’s UAE arm has raised funding of $75 million in a round led by Falcon Edge Capital to expand its business in UAE and the Middle East. YourStory’s sources have confirmed the development.

The funding comes ahead of the company’s IPO plans this year, and according to media reports, PB Fintech Pvt Ltd, the parent company of Policybazaar and Paisabazaar, will go public through a Rs 4,000-crore share sale.

Started in 2008, PolicyBazaar is an insurance aggregator and a financial technology startup that enabled users to compare financial services from major insurance companies on the basis of price, quality, and key benefits. In a recent report, analysts at Bernstein estimated that Policybazaar commands 90 percent of the share in the online insurance distribution market. Overall, Policybazaar Group is backed by a host of investors including the likes of SoftBank, InfoEdge, Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, and Premji Invest, besides investments from other PE funds and family offices.

In January this year, the company shared in a press statement that Policybazaar has achieved a significant milestone by insuring 10 lakh lives between April-Dec 2020. Over these nine months, Policybazaar sold four lakh health insurance policies amounting to a total sum insured of over Rs 7 lakh crore.

At YourStory’s TechSparks 2020 event, Sarbvir Singh, CEO of PolicyBazaar, said that falling seriously ill was considered a ‘low probability event’, historically. But COVID-19 has been one of the biggest wake-up calls. Now, people can’t say ‘I won’t fall sick’ or ‘I don’t need health insurance’ because everyone — from Amitabh Bachchan to Amit Shah — has fallen prey to this virus.

Awareness about insurance products and policies, Sarbvir said, has been the biggest boost the insurance sector has gotten over the course of the last six to seven months. It has also helped the ecosystem understand where it has been missing the mark.

“We’re going in the right direction. People have understood why they need to buy insurance. But we’ve realised that affordability is a huge issue, especially since the salaried class has been hurt during the pandemic. Insurance players need to do better so that consumers can find it easier to purchase,” he said.