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Turtlemint opens first office in UAE, eyes global expansion

Turtlemint founded in 2015  — by Dhirendra Mahayavanshi and Anand Prabhudesai — has created a wide network of 225,000+ digital partners.

Turtlemint, a leading Indian insurtech company, has launched its first office in Dubai with an aim to unlock the market opportunity in a fast-developing Mena region.

The expansion — to scale digital insurance platform offering for enterprises — is aligned with its recent Series E funding of $120 million. Turtlefin provides end-to-end tech solutions to enable insurance sales and services and digitise insurance sales and services via comprehensive technology support for large enterprises like banks and other distributors.

Dhirendra Mahyavanshi, Co-founder, Turtlemint stated: “Turtlemint continues with its philosophy of empowering financial advisors and distributors in India, we are going beyond borders with our bouquet of tech solutions to large institutions and with this expansion we are geared to address the rising demand witnessed in the Middle East region, where banks are demonstrating an increased desire to provide superior digital services. We recognised a need for a technology partner in the current traditional banking landscape of the region, to facilitate a combination of legacy systems and new fintech capabilities in order to offer a seamless digital client experience. We aim to bridge this gap with Turtlefin’s comprehensive technology platform and support the BFSI community at large.”

Turtlemint founded in 2015  — by Dhirendra Mahayavanshi and Anand Prabhudesai — has created a wide network of 225,000+ digital partners. Most recently, the company onboarded Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the brand ambassador and launched the campaign #ActiveHoJaao to sensitise passive customers. Turtlefin works with over 160,000 financial advisors and 50+ financial institutions in India and the Middle East. In 2020 the company pioneered the common API framework. Since then, the Turtlefin platform has been a significant breakthrough for the region and has gained further popularity post its partnership with Mashreq in 2021.

Currently, Turtlefin is planning to work with multiple enterprises and users to help scale the insurance distribution platform.

Laxmikant Pawar will be leading the new centre and will be working with Amreesh Kher, chief partnerships distribution officer. The company is also looking to hire multiple candidates in 2023 across departments to bolster the operations in the region.

Anand Prabhudesai, Co-founder Turtlemint commented, “We see a massive opportunity in the Middle East market to assist banks & financial institutions in becoming digital-first by improving their value chain. With Turtlefin we have digitized and simplified the entire insurance distribution value chain benefiting all stakeholders” He further added, “The biggest testimony to our product has been our consistent growth numbers. In a short period of time, Turtlefin has received a grand welcome by the Middle East BFSI fraternity, as over 50+ banks and financial institutions are already benefiting from our solutions, along with 45+ Insurers on board across India & UAE”

Turtlemint is currently planning to offer an embedded product with a regional telecom operator where embedded life insurance can be given to consumers in a streamlined manner without having to really go through an extensive pen and paper process.

“The UAE is definitely becoming a regional hub and the way in which Covid was handled by the UAE especially solidified this. We saw a shift in a lot of technological activity in Dubai, for example, Dubai is now one of the largest hubs for crypto. A lot of Indian technology entrepreneurs are shifting their tech resources to Dubai as it offers a special perk, to the engineers. One of the biggest challenges is retaining talent, and if we are able to make Dubai a regional hub for technology, it could be very exciting,” said Mahayavanshi

“In Bangalore, it is as expensive as any other city in India to hire tech talent. If you offer Dubai as location, we should be able to look at shifting at least 15 to 20 per cent of our workforce,. We have about 2,500 employees in India, out of which about 500 resources are in technology. Out of that technology, maybe 50 to 75 people could be shifted to Dubai that could become our technology hub for the entire region, as we expand into the Mena region and could be catered out of Dubai,” concluded Mahayavanshi. — sandhya@khaleejtimes.com