Narayana Murthy’s private investment firm Catamaran Ventures invests in online insurance platform Coverfox

Coverfox.com, an online insurance distribution platform was recently funded by N.R. Narayana Murthy’s private investment firm Catamaran Ventures to further strengthen and grow its online insurance comparison and sales business. Coverfox provides rich comparison of plans from top insurance companies, recommendations from experts and a seamless user experience to buy insurance policies on its portal. This funding received by Glitterbug Technologies, which powers Coverfox is in addition to the earlier rounds made by Accel US, Accel India and SAIF partners. These include a round of US$ 2 million by Accel India and SAIF Partners and a second one of US$12 million with the two along with Accel US.

Coverfox was established in May 2013. It has developed proprietary technology based comparison and sales platform, insurance domain expertise and after sales support and claims services to make it a preferred destination for customers to buy and manage insurance policies.

Since the last year when it began operations, Coverfox has witnessed a commendable growth of 500 per cent. Across the insurance categories of car, bike, health, travel and home insurance that it currently offers, Coverfox is registering an overall growth of 40-50 percent month on month with exciting contribution from the auto segment. The portal’s aim for the next six months is to be the largest online auto insurance provider. Coverfox also expects its website traffic to double by the end of the year and reach 1 million visitors per month.

“Insurance in India is a largely under-penetrated market (3.9 percent as against the world average of 6.3 percent). Buying insurance till now has been largely an offline activity. The industry is at the helm of witnessing a massive shift — from being a seller's market to becoming a buyer's market. Coverfox’s mission is to spearhead this change and make the online process straightforward, simple, quick and transparent for everyone. Our focus on our customers and technology led innovative approach is geared towards enabling our consumers with best-fit choices, information that is easy to comprehend and a safe buying experience. We truly believe everyone should be able to buy insurance just as easily & quickly as they buy air tickets" said Varun Dua, CEO & Co-founder of Coverfox.

As per a Boston Consulting Group and Google India report, by 2020, 3 in every 4 insurance policies sold will be impacted by digital channels at either pre-purchase stage, purchase or renewal stages. The report states that insurance sales from online channels will touch INR 15,000 Cr by 2020, with overall Internet influenced sales at INR 300,000-400,000 Cr.

"The online insurance market is soon set to witness a substantial growth. The future is certainly positive as an increased number of internet users will become a part of this market in the coming years. We value our relationship with Coverfox. Their customer-centric approach to business and good user experience makes them a great partner to work with. With more and more people buying insurance online, we hope to benefit our customers with such robust associations." – Mr. Tapan Singhel, MD & CEO, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance.

“Catamaran chose to partner with Coverfox because we were attracted to the company's customer-oriented approach to insurance distribution built on top of a robust technology platform. The insurance sector will experience significant growth in India and we believe that the company has the opportunity to lead a meaningful change in how customers view, buy and manage their insurance. We were impressed with the leadership’s team’s technology focus and initial results stand testament to their execution capabilities. We are thrilled to be partners in this journey,” said Abishek Laxminarayan, Investment Director, Catamaran Ventures.

“Recent growth witnessed at Coverfox provides early validation of our thesis that the Insurance industry in India is poised for technology based disruption. Also, we’re extremely happy to welcome Catamaran Ventures as a partner in this promising venture” mentions Subrata Mitra, Partner at Accel Partners

Rohit Jain of SAIF partners added “Coverfox team has the right mix of industry depth in Varun and product and technology understanding in Devendra to build a truly innovative company. We are confident they will leverage this investment from Catamaran Ventures to further strengthen the business.”