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Why InfoEdge (Naukri) Invested In PolicyBazaar.com? What’s the fund size they have to Invest in Startups? - InfoEdge CFO Ambarish Raghuvanshi Answers
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We caught up with Infoedge CFO Mr. Ambarish Raghuvanshi and questioned him about the recent investment by Infoedge in the online insurance leads website Policybazaar.com which is owned by EtechAces Marketing and Consulting Pvt Ltd.
Here is an exclusive interview with the Infoedge CFO on what made them cut this deal and what to they plan to invest in the next 2-3 years
Q) What made Infoedge invest in Etechaces? Could you disclose their current revenue numbers?
A) The drivers for the investment are attractivenes of the space-financial product distribution, quality of the founding team and the relatively early stage of the market. It is far too early to talk about numbers but the success of businesses like moneysupermarket.com and confused.com in the UK points in the direction of size being attractive
Q) In what tranches is the funds being invested? What are the milestones that are set? Maybe some projections that can be shared?
A) The investment will be made over the next 12-18 months in tranches in line with operating and revenue milestones. They are also staged with expenditure and investment plans. In early stage businesses it is not possible to be too precise with tranches
Q) What would the funds invested be used for?
A) To build the business in terms of sales system, team, brand, marketing, channels, etc
Q) How will this integrate with other properties of Infoedge? if at all?
A) Not anticipated at this stage. It is in the internet space and is monetised from Day 1
Q) PolicyBazaar also plans to offer loans - Would this be student loans? If yes would they be marketed via Shiksha.com?
A) As of now it will focus on insurance. In Phase 2 they would look at other areas such as loans. At that time it could be fused with shiksha for educational loans and with 99acres for realestate loans, for example
Q) Could you share the cost per lead and the profitability of a model like policybazaar? What will be the other kind of monetization model that will be explored?
A) It will largely be lead based revenue, from insurance companies. Far too early to talk about other issues. Similar models in other countries are profitable
Q) What are the spaces in which Infoedge plans to invest in going ahead?
A) Around the internet, monetisable, India-focused and with a clear business focus. Apart from these broad parameters, it is fairly open
Q) What’s the size of the inhouse fund available for investing?
A) We will invest Rs 100-150 crores over the next 2-3 years but this is not cast in stone. It will re-assessed and tweaked as we go along.
WATBlog Analysis - It does seem that infoedge is clearly focussed on revenue driven internet startups and is very cautious in picking its investments until and unless there is a clear synergy or apparent revenue model which gels with its current set of portals.  Its their monetization ability be it the subscription model that naukri itself followed or the pay per leads model that policybazaar seems to be following that has made them India’s first BSE listed dotcom company. It is very unlikely that naukri might invest in a social networking startup given the dismal global stats with regards to monetisation or even in an emerging technology that has no apparent revenue model just like google did in its early days. Though given this approach the investment in brijj (which is a home grown site aping linkedin.com from the infoedge stable) seems a little off mark given that monetization there seems unlikely in the near term atleast. Maybe Sanjeev (Naukri CEO) or Hitesh (Naukri COO) can clarify on that..
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