Selling financial products online is not exactly new to the Indian market. However, when an online giant like Amazon adds insurance products to the offerings on its site, it does become news. According to reports, Amazon is on the verge of making a Rs 100 crore investment in a Mumbai-based startup Acko Technologies and will also act as its online distributor, selling insurance products, according to a report in Economic Times.
Acko sells its financial products exclusively online and the startup has mopped up an amount of Rs 200 crore in fund raising around six months earlier.
The interesting part in this tie-up with Amazon is that prior to that Acko was in similar discussions with Amazon’s Indian rival Flipkart. However, the deal with Flipkart did not materialize and that is how they landed in the lap of Amazon. If you were wondering how the company’s name is Acko Technologies, the insurance business is handled by a subsidiary Acko General Insurance, which has received the mandatory clearances to sell these products.
The reports suggest that Acko was probably holding talks on a possible investment with both Amazon and Flipkart simultaneously over the past few months. And according to this insider, Flipkart did not come on board, while Amazon agreed to the arrangement. The final edges are being ironed out and the actual transfer of funds will happen in the near future.
Acko Technologies has as its existing investors, Catamaran Ventures, floated by Narayana Moorthy; then, you have Kris Gopalakrishnan, another Infosys old hand and Hemendra Kothari of DSP Blackrock and venture funding agencies, Accel Partners and SAIF Partners.
Interestingly, this comes at the same time as the setting up of Flipkart’s new entity ‘Sabin Advisors’, for its insurance business and also venture capital funding. According to a filing with the registrar of companies, the company was incorporated on December 7.