Verak

Overview

Verak was a two-act insurance startup. It entered Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch as BimaPe, a consumer wallet for understanding family insurance policies, then retired that product and rebuilt around property insurance for India's micro, small, and medium enterprises. The second product combined phone and WhatsApp sales with automated underwriting, multiple carrier quotes, payment collection, and claims support.

The company proved that software could compress underwriting and servicing work, but the cost of creating demand remained stubbornly human. Customers needed education, trust, and follow-up; carriers controlled commissions and service quality; and field sales had to expand before revenue. Verak improved almost every metric it could control yet still recovered only ₹0.80 of revenue for each ₹1 of blended acquisition cost. InsuranceDekho acquired the team and technology for an undisclosed amount in April 2023. The deal put Verak's specialized process inside a distributor whose carrier access and agent network could absorb its fixed costs.

Image 1 / 3

Founding Story

Rahul Mathur came to insurance through both family experience and formal training. When his mother developed septicemia during his childhood, a ₹25,000 health-insurance premium covered roughly ₹2.5 million in hospital expenses. He later studied mathematics and statistics at the University of Warwick, worked in actuarial roles, joined UK bicycle-insurance startup Laka, and moved to Accenture's fintech innovation lab. When the pandemic brought him back to India in 2020, friends and relatives treated him as their insurance interpreter. Their policies lived across email accounts, Google Drive folders, and physical lockers.

Mathur told Kuwi that he believed "no one had thought about insurance from a product first lens and tried to simplify it using software." He discussed the concept with about 125 people over five weeks, then began building BimaPe with Vishrut, Eashan, Abraz, Kunal, and other early teammates. He described the founding decision more bluntly: "I just flew back home with whatever I had."^[1]

BimaPe assembled a family's policy records, translated dense terms, and identified overlaps or missing coverage. The team entered YC with what Mathur later called a basic tool rather than a finished product. It raised pre-seed and seed financing and expanded quickly, but early attention did not turn into a durable business. After eight months, BimaPe missed the activation, acquisition, and revenue targets the team had set after YC. Fifteen weekly product changes did not close the gap. Mathur concluded that the team had mistaken a vision for a product strategy, treated an insurance-design problem as an engineering problem, and spread a small engineering group across life, health, and motor policies.^[2]

The team paused BimaPe development in July 2021, circulated a written pivot memo, and moved to business property insurance. Mathur later said it should have pivoted in March, when new capital and talent made the alternative possible; sunk cost kept BimaPe alive for several extra months. The founding group formally retired the product in September and adopted Verak, a name made from the first letters of their first names.^[3]

Timeline

• October 2020: The team began building BimaPe and interviewed for YC W21.
• Early 2021: BimaPe raised pre-seed and seed capital, joined Y Combinator, and tested a family insurance wallet.
• July 2021: The company paused BimaPe development and began the Verak pivot.
• September 2021: BimaPe was publicly retired; Verak focused on business property insurance for Indian MSMEs.
• 2022: Verak launched direct sales, automated much of underwriting, and added field sales and physical protection products.
• January 2023: The team began a more product-led sales effort while continuing acquisition talks.
• April 2023: InsuranceDekho acquired Verak for undisclosed terms and integrated about 15 team members into its SMB insurance operation.