InfoEdge has invested early in 3 Platforms – Selling online Insurance with PolicyBazaar, Meritnation Supporting Education and Canvera
PolicyBazaar has a dominant share of around 90% in the insurance aggregator space. The space has five to six other organised players, including MyInsuranceClub, EasyPolicy and InsurancePandit. The company also faces competition from direct online platforms of insurance companies, some of whom (notably ICICI Lombard) do not use web aggregators. PolicyBazaar estimates that it accounts for a 50% share of the overall online insurance space.
Long-term visibility for the business comes from the low penetration of the online medium, which the company estimates is less than 1% of overall policy sales. According to management the company has grown consistently at over 100% in the past three to four years. According to the last reported financials in FY12, the company reported a topline of Rs108m.
IRDA recently notified several changes in the business practices of online insurance aggregators. As a result, they would not be permitted to promote non-insurance products on the same website. This could impact PolicyBazaar’s revenues by 5-7%.
MeritNation is is significantly ahead of competition with 55-60% of the traffic share. Its closest competitor will account for less than half of that traffic. The company considers topperlearning.com, mathsguru.com, extramarks.com and learnnext.com as its competition.
Management believes content has become commoditised, as a lot of players have slides/video-based material of course content. According to it, durable differentiators are created from offering this content in easy-to-learn modules, giving appropriate tests based on gaps identified in learning. Also the company has been able to aggregate a lot of user generated content which it believes will enhance the engagement of users on the site.
According to management, it is targeting growth in student enrollments of about 70-80% this year. Pricing is likely to inch up as the company has been raising prices over the past few years. Management said the addressable market is currently around 20m-25m students that have internet access, of which only a fraction are using the services.
Canvera is the only organized national player in India’s online photography space. The barriers to entry in this business are: the high investment required to set up a production facility, build a strong engineering team and develop a large distribution network. The company believes one of its USPs is the unique technology element required in custom printing, in which every job has only one print.
According to management, it increases stickiness of its consumers by providing URLs along with printed albums, which can be shared with family/friends and on social networks like Facebook. Canvera believes its technology interface, which works across PC and mobile operating systems, is future-ready and far ahead of any other Indian player.
The majority of Canvera’s revenues are generated by providing high-end customised printed products to professional photographers. It also helps photographers to build their websites and to design their books.