Waterdrop raises US$230M Series D to help patients source crowdfunding for their treatment
Beijing-headquartered online insurance company Waterdrop, with subsidiaries in Southeast Asia, has secured US$230 million in Series D financing, led by Zurich-based insurance company Swiss Re Group and Tencent.
Existing investors IDG Capital and Wisdom Choice Global Fund also joined the round.
This deal comes over a year after Waterdrop raised two rounds of investments — US$74 million Series B led by Tencent in March 2019 and US$144 million Series C led by Chinese PE firm Boyu Capital in June 2019.
Founded in 2016 by Peng Shen (a founding team member of Meituan), Waterdrop distributes insurance policies online via Waterdrop Insurance Mall, besides providing crowdfunding to fund illness treatment via its platform Waterdrop Crowdfunding.
It also operates mutuals funds.
The firm claims that the insurance mall has enrolled 100 million users and reported a total written premium of US$865 million in the first half of 2020.
At the same time, Waterdrop Crowdfunding has raised US$4.6 billion from 320 million users.
Waterdrop Mutual has helped 12,819 families by appropriating mutual fund of US$233 million in total.
The insurtech company will use the fresh capital to tap into Artificial Intelligence and Big Data (which can help to process vast amounts of information, increase workflow efficiency, and reduce operational costs).
Yu Haiyang, Managing Director of Tencent Investment, said: “As the Chinese commercial health insurance market is expanding rapidly, Waterdrop seizes the market opportunity and succeeds in meeting user needs, use technology and innovation to provide tens of millions of families with protection, and helps to further complement the personal healthcare system.”
Singapore VC firm Jubilee Capital Management is one of the early investors of Waterdrop.