Online insurance marketplace Policybazaar.com has set up 15 fully operational offline stores across India. The brand will eventually expand to 100 locations. The company said in a statement that the setting up of offline stores marks the operationalisation of the broker licence received from regulator IRDAI.

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The bricks-and-mortar stores will serve as seamless aftersales and sales experience centres for 10 million customers as well as help resolve any localised queries or service requests, the company said.

At each store, new and existing customers will have access to Policybazaar’s proprietary comparison engines that will help choose the right insurance product and even compare multiple products.

As a broker, Policybazaar said it will provide on-ground claims support, thereby boosting its ‘AapKiSideHai’ promise to customers. The company is launching this capability with employees stationed in 30 cities.

Leveraging a seamless end-to-end technology in the insurance journey, the company will also address the fast-growing SME and SOHO opportunities. It will particularly focus on serving the needs of self-employed professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

Policybazaar has also launched its B2B2C, Point of Sales Person (PoSP) business in order to help increase insurance penetration in tier two and tier three cities, which account for 50 percent of consumer demand.

The company has allocated $100 million to build this business, as per its statement.

Yashish Dahiya, co-founder and group CEO, Policybazaar.com, said the company will be able to offer more products and services with diversified insurance solutions to those more comfortable with physical meetings and offline stores.

The company also announced the expansion of its senior leadership team. Insurance industry veteran Rajiv Gupta, formerly executive director, SBI Life Insurance Co Ltd, has joined Policybazaar.com to lead its expansion plans in the offline space.

In India, the offline insurance market is very significant as over 90 percent of the insurance products are sold through offline channels.

Policybazaar.com is the flagship brand of Policybazaar.com Group of companies, that owns fintech brand Paisabazaar.com, B2B venture ZPhin.com, and lending and insurance marketplace in the UAE region, Policybazaar.ae.

The Policybazaar.com Group has backing from a host of investors including the likes of Soft Bank, InfoEdge (Naukri.com), Temasek, Tiger Global Management, True North, Premji Invest, besides investments from other PE funds and family offices.

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)