In talking with them, what they really appreciate about us is our neutral marketplace, the fact that we serve both carriers and brokers. “They started calling on us a couple years ago now, and we’ve had several interactions, obviously a lot more over the last few months. CEO Paris Cole spoke to FreightWaves by phone about the ICONIQ deal and the vision shared by the investors and ’s management team. “ is the premier and trusted partner in this space, with an advanced technology platform that removes friction for all parties within the freight ecosystem, and an established network of transportation professionals across the country.” “The $1 trillion freight industry is primed for incredible growth and technology adoption in the coming years, as tech-enabled platforms are increasingly essential for managing operations, reducing costs and improving efficiency,” said Will Griffith, Partner at ICONIQ Capital, in a statement. ICONIQ maintains offices in San Francisco, New York, Palo Alto and Singapore. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz and Sheryl Sandberg are all investors, as is LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman and Twitter and Square’s Jack Dorsey. ICONIQ Capital has closely guarded the identities of its limited partners, but they are known to be a who’s who of Silicon Valley billionaire family offices. The whisper number heard for the pre-money valuation was just under $1 billion. Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority has made it mandatory for internet firms to procure a licence prior to starting such operations.This morning announced that ICONIQ Capital, a leading Silicon Valley growth equity firm, has made a majority investment in the online freight matching and load board solution. "Only about 1.5 per cent of the insurance in India is sold online (but) the quality of customer and the renewal rate through internet is extremely high in India," said Alok Bhatnagar of EasyPolicy, a rival to PolicyBazaar. Industry members estimate there is huge potential in online insurance aggregation, as there are limited players due to heavy regulation by the government. Earlier this month, Premji Invest bought a 1 per cent stake in HDFC Life Insurance for Rs 185 crore. "Our aim of raising the new round is to build a war chest to invest in technology and talent and have enough cash to sustain for next 3-4 years,” said Dahiya whose company books annual premium of about Rs 500 crore for over 42 general and life insurance companies. It aims to also build a mobile application based marketplace for agents and brokers, where customers can see their nearest agents and get a quote or fix a meeting. The six-year old company - 23 per cent of which is owned by internet company InfoEdge - will use the money from this latest round of funding to build a global distribution system which can provide real-time insurance quotes for agents across India. Inventus Capital Partners did not reply to email queries. Prakash Parthasarthy, chief investment officer at Premji Invest, declined to confirm the investment in response to a query from ET. Gurgaon-based ETechAces Marketing and Consulting, which runs the insurance aggregation portal Policybazaar, raised about $20 million in a round led by Tiger Global in May. ET was unable to ascertain the exact valuation of the company in this round.
"We are in talks with global and Indian private equity investors," Dahiya said. Yashish Dahiya, co-founder of PolicyBazaar confirmed the fund raising but declined to share the names of the investors.
"Term sheets have already been signed with a few of the investors for this fresh round of funding," said one of the sources. The deal expected to close in the new year will include participation from existing investors Tiger Global and Kanwal Rekhi-led Inventus Capital Partners and will mark a fourth round of funding for the Gurgaon-based company. NEW DELHI: Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro chairman Azim Premji, and San Francisco based Iconiq Capital - which counts Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman as investors - is likely to lead an investment round of up to Rs 400 crore in online insurance retailer PolicyBazaar, according to sources privy to the development.