SUMMARY
Ankur Capital aims to transform the scale of available parametric insurance options in countries like India through the partnership
IBISA aims to unlock agri-insurance for smallholder farmers around the world through its weather-indexed parametric platform and automated remote loss assessment
IBISA is now scaling its operations in India to provide insurance to farmers in Odisha, Karnataka and Telangana against excess rainfall, wind speed, and drought
Early-stage venture capital (VC) fund Ankur Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in Luxembourg-based agri insurtech startup IBISA’s seed funding round.
Through this partnership, Ankur Capital aims to transform the scale of available parametric insurance options in countries like India, which have a vast addressable market.
IBISA, founded in 2019, aims to unlock agri-insurance for smallholder farmers around the world. It has developed a weather-indexed parametric platform which allows index design, policy management and automated remote loss assessment based on satellite data.
It started its operations in India with the DHAN Foundation to provide parametric insurance against drought coverage in Tamil Nadu. It also opened a registered office in Bengaluru in February this year.
IBISA is now scaling its operations in India to provide insurance to farmers in Odisha, Karnataka and Telangana against excess rainfall, wind speed, and drought.
Founded in 2014 by Rema Subramanian and Ritu Verma, Ankur Capital invests in digital and deep science technology startups. It currently has 25 startups in its portfolio across two funds. Captain Fresh, Rupifi, String Bio, Vegrow are among the startups in its portfolio.
Speaking about how the lack of data has hampered the growth of the agricultural insurance industry in developing countries for decades, Verma, partner at Ankur Capital said, “Legacy crop insurance involved long manual processes making them impractical for developing markets where smallholder farming is the norm, and parametric insurance has historically been unviable due to the lack of detailed climate-related datasets.”
“With IBISA, we sought to create technology that would help reduce costs for the active players in the insurance space,” she added.
According to Ankur Capital, IBISA’s digital assessment system and low-cost distribution model makes insurance affordable for small farmers.
IBISA claims to be able to address the needs of various agri value chain players with tailor-made products for lack of rain, excess rainfall, extreme temperatures, cyclones, and more.
In India, it competes with GramCover, nurture.farm, BigHaat, DeHaat, among others.
Besides India, IBISA has its operations in New Zealand, Senegal, Guatemala, Philippines, and other African nations.
As per an Inc42 report, India’s agritech market is estimated to reach $24.1 Bn by 2025. This development is largely driven by the rise in internet penetration across India, increasing post-harvest and supply chain losses, lack of finance and high-quality inputs for farmers, and a growing interest in the sector from investors.
