PolicyBazaar plans to raise close to $870 million through its IPO at a likely valuation of $3.5 billion

• PB Fintech has also converted itself to a public limited company ahead of the IPO process.
• The company received stakeholders’ approval to go public in an EGM held on July 5, 2021.
• The company is reportedly seeking a valuation of $3.5 billion with this public issue.

Online insurance marketplace PolicyBazaar’s parent company PB Fintech has converted itself to a public limited entity and is planning to raise ₹6,500 crore (around $871 million) via an initial public offering (IPO), the company’s regulatory filings have revealed.

PB Fintech has also received approval for IPO at the Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held on July 5. The latest details about PolicyBazaar’s ₹6,500 crore IPO was first reported by CNBC TV18.

PB Fintech (formerly known as EtechAces Marketing and Consulting) was founded by Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad alumni Yashish Dahiya, Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar in 2008.

PolicyBazaar, an online platform for users to purchase insurance policies, is one of the subsidiaries of PB Fintech.

Other subsidiaries of PB Fintech include online lending platform PaisaBazaar (launched in 2014) and healthtech venture DocPrime (launched in 2018), which lets visitors book consultations with doctors or schedule a range of medical tests.

Notably, PolicyBazaar is the only entity that is going public from PB Fintech’s banner.

PolicyBazaar has raised around $766 million to date. It was reportedly valued at $2.4 billion in March this year, after it raised $45 million through a secondary share sale from private equity (PE) firm True North and a few other individual investors.

The company’s investors include Tiger Global Management, SoftBank, Tencent, Wellington Management, PremjiInvest and Falcon Edge Capital, among others.

According to a Bloomberg report published in April 2021 citing anonymous sources, PolicyBazaar was planning to go public before the end of this year. Meanwhile, several reports suggest that PolicyBazaar could be valued at more than $3.5 billion in its IPO.

In February this year, it was reported that PolicyBazaar was finalising bankers for its over $540 million IPO to be listed in India. PB Fintech was said to have invited proposals from at least eight investment banks for the proposed IPO. The company is expected to dilute up to a 15% stake in the public offering.

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