NEW DELHI -- Plum, a group health insurance startup, announced on Monday that it has raised $15.6 million in a Series A funding round led by New York-based investment company Tiger Global.
The round also saw the participation of existing investors Sequoia Capital India's Surge, Tanglin Venture Partners, Incubate Fund and Gemba Capital the startup said in a statement.
Angel investors in the round included; Cred founder Kunal Shah; Unacademy founders Gaurav Munjal, Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh; Groww founders Lalit Keshre, Harsh Jain and Ishan Bansal; Livspace founders Ramakant Sharma and Anuj Srivastava; and Hired founder and Douglas Feirstein.
Plum raised $5 million in earlier rounds last year.
The fresh funds will be used to further scale engineering, business development and operations teams, the statement added. The company is building new insurance products for small and midsize enterprises that have teams as small as seven employees and cannot afford to pay annual premiums. Plum is additionally looking at building deeper relationships with leading insurers like ICICI Lombard, Care Health, Star Health and New India Assurance.
"The adoption of health insurance by startups, SMEs and corporates is increasing exponentially and is further accelerated by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, said Plum co-founder and CEO Abhishek Poddar. "We are building Plum to enable a high-quality health care experience for every single employee and their family."
Founded in late 2019 by Poddar and Saurabh Arora, Plum claims a growth rate of 110% quarter on quarter. It has onboarded 600 organizations from across SMEs, corporates and growing Indian startups such as Groww, Unacademy and others.
The group health insurance market in India, which is almost 50% of the total $3.5 billion health insurance market, has seen annual growth of about 25% in the last few years and is doubling every three years, the statement said.
Tiger Global has been aggressively investing in Indian startups in 2021. The investment company helped incubate at least eight unicorns in the country this year, including Moglix, Urban Company, Chargebee, Gupshup, ShareChat, Groww, Infra.Market and Innovaccer.
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