Why did we invest in BimaKavach?

BimaKavach is a promising new-age insurtech startup which offers varied product suggestions specifically catered to businesses. It aims to raise insurance awareness, and adoption amongst the business folk of Bharat.

They raised $2 million in seed round this year, which was led by WaterBridge Ventures, along with Eximius Ventures, Blume Ventures, and Arali Ventures.

By the time they started raising, we had known the founders for over 6 months, and met them several times online, and offline to understand their approach in great detail.

Finally, we were convinced of the company’s vision, and future by the below mentioned factors.

1) An Underpenetrated White Space in Insurance

The Indian insurance industry is undergoing a very vibrant phase at the moment.

The swift digitisation of the entire insurance industry has greatly boosted its fate. Modern India, having a huge chunk of the youth population, is greatly receptive to digital solutions for vital processes which previously were cumbersome, and opaque. This is what will propel the industry to attain a gross premium underwritten of $222 billion by 2026.

As we witness this tremendous pace of growth, we need to realise that there is still considerable scope to grow for the industry. India is severely uninsured, and companies domestically will need to continue to strive to bring these people under the umbrella of insurance. This makes insurance an extremely lucrative market in India.

However, as impressive as this growth is, it is largely driven by life insurance.

Currently, the non-life insurance penetration in India is only 1%. A major reason for this is the lack of adequate knowledge amongst common people about how important insurance can be.

To further illustrate the point, in the metropolitan regions, the insurance penetration for MSMEs is estimated to be around 27–30%. In other areas, it is barely 1%. In developed countries like the USA, this figure is over 90%.

Further, even when this gulf between demand and supply is met, the delay in service can be as long as an entire month.

BimaKavach aims to address all of these concerns to greatly increase insurance adoption in this market.

Through their advanced AI capabilities, they are able to recommend products that fit in perfectly with the market’s needs, thus boosting demand. Moreover, due to their operational efficiency, they are able to issue policies instantly. They also lay considerable emphasis on ensuring that the process is as transparent, and convenient as possible.

2) Well-embedded Founding Team

Prior to founding BimaKavach, Tejas had already walked through the halls of entrepreneurship once. He operated an e-commerce platform specifically for indie clothes named ‘The Glu Affair’ for over 3 years. Post this, he worked with Bajaj Allianz as a licensed insurance agent to understand the complexities of the market in greater detail. After attaining sufficient experience, he sought to redefine the market, and initiate BimaKavach.

He is also joined in this mission by an experienced team, which brings over 40 years combined experience within the insurance industry.

A great strength for the team is that it features a new-age, innovative approach, combined with industry experience spanning decades. BimaKavach is able to make use of both of seemingly contrasting elements to create a holistic approach that is simultaneously agile, and rooted in well-attained confidence.

The BimaKavach team represents critical parts of the industry from a thought leadership standpoint, and have deep working relationships with some of the largest operators in the insurance industry to accelerate their growth.

3) Simple and Easy to Use Product

Perhaps BimaKavach’s biggest strength is the sheer precision, and care with which they’ve approached product design.

MSMEs, as a nascent audience, need to be completely satisfied to make them feel confident about purchasing insurance products. BimaKavach attempts to instill trust in them via 3 methods:

1) Tech-powered Recommendations: BimaKavach’s in-house system filters, prioritizes, and recommends relevant insurance products making it quick and simple to get educated about them.

2) Tailored Insurance Products: BimaKavach is designing its own easy-to-understand SME/startup-focused bespoke insurance products for a range of industries to deliver hyper-personalised risk management to vendors.

3) Digital Consumer Experience: BimaKavach is enabling seamless customer experience through real-time, paperless purchase of insurance; digital policy management; and robust hybrid claim processing systems.

Through these central functions, BimaKavach creates an incomparably easy experience for MSMEs. They focus on reducing the jargon surrounding the industry to zero, digitising the entire process to reduce the gap in service, and making everything as transparent as possible. These are the hallmarks of exemplary products.

4) Nuanced View Compared to the Competition

As illustrated above, insurance is a very competitive market to break into.

However, BimaKavach is one of the few players who focuses the entire scope of its offerings only on business enterprises. This coupled with their emphasis on customer satisfaction makes them the most prominent player in the space for now, and for the future.

Moreover, BimaKavach has also had their D&O products approved by IRDAI. This is a rather laborious process, which usually takes a year. This means that other competitors cannot use these insurance products in the way they were originally drafted. It takes a considerable amount of time to get these products manufactured, and ready for sale. In case the competitors wish to enter this line, they would either have to sell the current set of products or work on getting new products which will take them considerable time.

As validation to their impeccable approach, when we first met them, they had garnered gross premiums exceeding Rs. 16 crore. Moreover, this sum was attained in merely 3 years.

Therefore, due to them being one of the first players to direct all their attention toward this particular market, the regulatory hurdles they’ve been able to get over, and the customer validation they’ve received, BimaKavach is in a pre-eminent position within this segment. This is all due to the nuanced view on the basis of which they operate.

Conclusion

The Indian insurance industry is witnessing a boom at the moment. It is expected to grow with a CAGR of 13% from 2021–2026. This pace denotes the great progress made already, and the opportunity to further expand the market considerably in the future. However, the lack of adequate knowledge, and general apprehension amongst Indian business owners have severely restricted the B2B insurance segment from truly becoming a major force within the industry.

Tejas, and his team aren’t just entrepreneurs, but incredible repositories of knowledge and insights for the rest of the industry. Through their grit, and sector expertise, they’ve been able to create a value proposition that can unlock a very potent market, and answer all their fears. Thus, a well-embedded founding team is a key strength for BimaKavach.

The key differentiating factor for BimaKavach has been their meticulously crafted product. Understanding the apprehensions inherent in MSMEs, the team has tried to create a solution that is simultaneously holistic, and lucid. They’ve truly kept the business enterprises’ convenience at the front and center of their approach.

Through their foresight, Tejas has been able to perceive a key gap within the industry, and create a comprehensive solution that can address all of this market’s problems. The team was able to create a regulatory barrier and significant competitive advantage, all through their nuanced view of the industry. This has enabled them to grow at CAGR of 41% over the past 3 years.

We are incredibly proud to become a part of BimaKavach’s journey, and wish them the best of luck.