Policybazaar looks to return to profitability this fiscal

Insurance aggregator Policybazaar expects to return to profitability this fiscal on the back of a surge in demand for insurance products amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Growth over the last year is between 70 per cent and 100 per cent depending on the insurance product, Policybazaar.com Group CEO and co-founder Yashish Dahiya told PTI. "This year we should be profitable. We were profitable in FY18 while FY19 and FY20 we were not quite profitable. So this (growth in business) will help us to become profitable from this year onwards," he said. Due to the loss posted by Policybazaar in the last two financial years, fund infusion by investment major SoftBank during the last round came under scrutiny. Dahiya, however, gave a thumbs up to the SoftBank investment team, led by Munish Verma and Sumer Juneja. "I don't know about what others have to say, but the SoftBank team has been the most mature and consistent investor we have on our capital table. Munish's first investment was us, then Firstcry, followed by Delhivery and Lenskart. All of them are highly regarded for being capital efficient," he said. He further said the company will look to consolidate its operations, invest in customer service and work towards capital efficiency as it eyes swinging back into profitability this fiscal. Despite booking a loss, the company's revenue jumped three-fold while it doubled both market share and valuation at the end FY20, he added. During 2020-21, Dahiya said the company should log revenues of Rs 1,100 crore and post a marginal profit. On the insurance premium side, he said the current fiscal will close with Rs 6,000 crore as against Rs 4,000 crore in FY20. As far as the other business Paisabazar is concerned, he said there is some stress on that side as demand for loans has come down significantly due to the COVID-19 crisis.

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