Binny-Bansal Backed Acko Acquihires Automotive Startup VLer Tech

Mumbai-based motor insurance provider startup Acko has acquihired Mumbai-based automotive company VLer Technologies. The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed yet.

Following this acquisition deal, both the VLer founders, Sanjay Bharti and Akash Saxena have joined the Acko Technology team.

VLer was founded in 2016 with an aim to solve issues related to broken car retail experience in India and provide a hassle-free experience when a customer is looking out to buy a new car.  It uses an algorithm-based recommendation system for helping users looking to buy a car.

It also aids the user in dealer negotiations and also looks after financing, insurance and other related paperwork after finalising of the deal.

This deal makes sense for Acko because VLer’s car retail experience will help it develop its offering.

According to Acko which offers vehicle insurance, this acquisition will help it strengthen its auto-ecosystem. VLer’s capabilities and expertise in this area will help Acko improve their offering to customers. It also looks to provide better customer satisfaction across the entire lifecycle of car purchase and usage.

“Insurtech is our core and major focus area. Our next steps on this are to track down various data points on customer behaviour, usage patterns to enhance insurance and underwriting technology. We believe with the domain expertise of VLer team, it will help us leverage this faster.” said Ruchi Deepak, Co-founder of Acko.

This development comes in after the online insurance startup raised $65 Mn in Series C funding from a bunch of existing as well as new investors in March. Flipkart cofounder Binny Bansal invested $25 Mn in this round. The other investors in the round included Amazon, Kabir Misra-led RPS Ventures, Intact Ventures Inc, Accel, SAIF and TechPro Ventures.

Prior to this, ecommerce giant Amazon had also led a $12 Mn funding round in Acko in May 2018. Ashish Dhawan, the founder of private equity firm ChrysCap and  Catamaran Ventures had also participated in the round.

Acko General Insurance was founded by Coverfox cofounder Varun Dua in 2017. It offers customer-centric product design, instance-based products, customised real-time pricing and instant claim verification and settlement. It uses a direct-to-consumer approach for distributing motor insurance, allowing for favourable risk selection and superior underwriting.

.According to reports, the Indian online insurance industry will cross $2.8 Bn (INR 20,000 Cr) by 2020.

In an authored article, Varun Dua has revealed that the Indian general insurance sector is growing at a healthy 17% a year. Motor insurance forms the biggest chunk as it accounted for 49% of the gross direct premiums earned (FY16), at $6.5 Bn.