Indian insurance startup Go Digit raises $141M from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Go Digit, an Indian insurance startup, has raised $141 million from dozens of investors as part of an initial public offering that starts on Wednesday.

Fidelity, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Bay Pond, Mirae Asset Management, Steadview Capital, and HSBC, as well as Indian mutual funds operated by SBI, ICICI, Axis, Tata and Edelweiss served as anchor backers for the IPO, Go Digit disclosed in a filing to the stock exchange.

Founded by Kamesh Goyal, an ex-KPMG executive and insurance industry veteran, Go Digit sells auto, health, travel, and accidental insurance. The startup simplifies the insurance purchasing and redemption process, letting users self-inspect, submit claims, and process service requests from their smartphones. It had a total of about 43 million customers in the nine months ending December last year, and had issued a total of 8 million policies, according to its IPO prospectus.

The Mumbai-based startup aims to raise about $313 million from the IPO. It’s seeking a valuation of about $3 billion, which would be about 25% lower than its last private valuation of $4 billion.

Retail investors in India have been warming up to tech startup stocks. Even though the nation’s benchmark, Sensex, is up by 1.4% this year, many of the tech startups that went public on Indian stock exchanges in recent years have outperformed it. Shares of food delivery firm Zomato are up 51.2% this year, while insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar’s stock is up 60.4%.

Go Digit – backed by Peak XV, Fairfax Group, TVS Capital, A91 Partners, and Indian star cricketer Virat Kohli – initially sought to go public in 2022, but abandoned that plan citing poor market conditions. It had sought to raise $440 million in the IPO, according to the draft prospectus that it filed at the time.

Go Digit is only one of the many Indian companies looking to list publicly this year. Food delivery startup Swiggy also confidentially filed to go public last month, seeking to raise about $1.25 billion in the IPO. Ola Electric filed to go public late last year, and its older sibling, ride-hailing giant Ola, plans to follow suit later this year.