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Startup Deep Dive : Zopper — revenue fell 19% in FY25 while losses quadrupled

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The Invincible India Startup Deep Dive featured graphic for Zopper.

In FY25, Zopper’s revenue fell 18.8% to ₹363.3 crore (~$37.8 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) — and in that same year its net loss more than quadrupled, to ₹203.4 crore, from ₹46.8 crore the year before (Inc42 Datalabs; Entrackr). That is the contradiction sitting under India’s best-known embedded-insurance infrastructure company: a business that began in 2011 as a product-review website nobody used, sold its entire original business to PhonePe in 2018 for an undisclosed sum, and is now telling reporters it plans to list on the stock exchange by FY29.

Zopper does not sell insurance to anyone directly. It builds the software, APIs and, since December 2024, the licensed broking entity that let banks, NBFCs, retailers, phone makers, fintechs and travel platforms sell insurance and extended-warranty cover to their own customers at the moment of purchase — a phone case add-on, a two-wheeler cover, a bancassurance product bundled into a loan. The company says it now works with more than 45 insurers across upwards of 11,000 partner touchpoints (Zopper company website, 2026). What follows is what the filings, funding records and management’s own numbers say about how a twice-failed startup turned a checkout box into a ₹363 crore-a-year business — and why that business lost more money in FY25 even as it shrank.

Quick facts

Company Zopper (legal entity: Solvy Tech Solutions Private Limited)
Founded 2011, as a product-review and price-comparison site; rebuilt as an insurance-infrastructure company from 2018
Founders Surjendu Kuila (Co-founder & CEO), Mayank Gupta (Co-founder & COO), Neeraj Jain (co-founder; moved to PhonePe in 2018)
Businesses Device & Appliance Protection, Bancassurance SaaS platform, Insurance Broking (via IRDAI-licensed subsidiary Zopper Insurance Brokers)
Latest FY revenue ₹363.3 crore in FY25, down 18.8% year-on-year (Inc42 Datalabs; Entrackr)
Latest FY profit/loss Net loss of ₹203.4 crore in FY25, against a ₹46.8 crore loss in FY24 (Inc42 Datalabs)
Listed Private. Management has stated an intent to list by FY29 (Outlook Business, March 2026)
Market value / last valuation ~$182 million (Inc42 Datalabs estimate tied to the Series D round, November 2024) — not officially disclosed by the company
Key shareholders / CEO Surjendu Kuila (CEO); institutional backers include Elevation Capital, Blume Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Creaegis, Dharana Capital and ICICI Venture

What Zopper actually sells

Zopper is a business-to-business insurance-technology company, not a consumer insurance brand. Its customers are banks, NBFCs, original equipment manufacturers, e-commerce and quick-commerce platforms, retail chains, travel companies and fintechs that want to sell insurance or extended-warranty cover to people who are already buying something else from them. Zopper supplies the APIs, underwriting-partner integrations, policy issuance, servicing and claims workflow that sit behind that “add protection for ₹99” checkbox at checkout, and, through its own IRDAI-licensed broking arm, it can also act as the intermediary of record rather than just the technology layer. It does not underwrite risk itself — that stays with the 45-plus insurers it says it has integrated with (Zopper company website, 2026) — which makes it closer to a distribution and servicing utility than an insurer.

The origin

Surjendu Kuila spent eight years in the United States after his 2001 engineering degree from IIT Roorkee, working as a programmer at Apple in Cupertino and later as an engineer at RSA, the security division of EMC, before returning to India to do an MBA at IIM Calcutta, finishing in 2010 (Crunchbase; ZoomInfo). In 2011 he, Mayank Gupta and Neeraj Jain started a company called Reviews42, built on a simple bet: Indian shoppers would crowdsource honest product reviews the way they were starting to on global sites. They would not. The founders could not get the reviews to generate enough traffic or revenue to sustain the idea, so they rebuilt the same team and codebase into Zopper.com, a price-comparison tool with one twist competitors did not have — it compared prices at nearby physical shops as well as online retailers (Yo! Success). The founding insight that survived every rebuild that followed was narrower than “insurance” or even “e-commerce”: people will act on a comparison or a bundled offer shown to them at the exact moment they are already transacting, far more readily than they will go looking for a product on their own. That insight eventually found its real home in a checkout screen, not a review page.

The struggle years

Zopper’s rebuilds were not cosmetic pivots; each one meant abandoning revenue and rehiring around a different product.

What remained after that sale was a warranty-servicing business with no marketplace, no POS revenue and most of its senior engineers gone to the acquirer. Kuila and Gupta rebuilt a third time, this time deliberately narrowing to insurance and warranty infrastructure sold to enterprises rather than any consumer-facing product.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after in Zopper’s numbers sits on either side of that 2018 sale. In FY20, the rebuilt insurance-and-warranty business was still small: revenue of ₹10.96 crore. By FY21 it had grown 3.2 times, to ₹35 crore (Zopper management commentary reported by apidocs.zopper.com, 2024). That was the moment the post-PhonePe bet started to look like a real business rather than a consolation prize, and it is what persuaded Creaegis, ICICI Venture and Bessemer Venture Partners to lead a $75 million Series C round in September 2022 (TechCrunch, 19 September 2022; Entrackr, September 2022). Three institutional funding rounds and two years later, revenue had reached ₹447.5 crore in FY24 — roughly thirteen times the FY21 number (Inc42 Datalabs). The turning point was not a single announcement; it was the proof, in the two years immediately after losing its original business, that the warranty-and-insurance rebuild could compound.

The money behind it

Zopper has raised money in both of its lives — first as a consumer marketplace, then as enterprise insurance infrastructure — and the same investor, Blume Ventures, appears on both sides of the 2018 split.

Across both eras, Zopper has raised roughly $125 million to date (Inc42 Datalabs; Outlook Business, March 2026). Inc42 Datalabs pegs the company’s implied valuation at around $182 million as of the Series D close in November 2024 — an analyst estimate, not a figure the company or its investors have confirmed publicly.

How it makes money

Zopper earns fees and commissions for distributing and servicing insurance and warranty products; it never carries underwriting risk on its own balance sheet. Its stated revenue architecture has three legs (Zopper management commentary, reported by The Arc):

Costs sit mainly in technology and product headcount, insurer and partner integrations, and the servicing and claims-facilitation infrastructure needed to keep more than 1.5 million claims moving across its various programmes over the past three years (Outlook Business, March 2026). The part most outsiders get wrong is treating Zopper like an insurer whose risk is claims ratios. Its real exposure is regulatory and volume risk: because it earns a share of premium or a program fee rather than underwriting a policy, anything that compresses commission rates — a regulatory cap, a partner renegotiating terms, or a partner simply not renewing — hits Zopper’s top line directly, with no underwriting reserve to cushion it.

The numbers

Fiscal year Revenue (₹ crore) Net profit / (loss) (₹ crore)
FY23 187.3 (14.0)
FY24 447.5 (46.8)
FY25 363.3 (203.4)

Read together, the three years show a company that scaled revenue fast into FY24, then gave a chunk of it back in FY25 while spending significantly more — the opposite of the “margin expansion” management describes for the following two quarters (SMEStreet, March 2026).

Where the money comes from

The surprise is which of these lines is doing the work. Device & Appliance Protection was the business that got Zopper through its first insurtech-era funding rounds, but the newest and smallest line — insurance broking, live for barely over a year — is the one management now points to for growth, while overall revenue actually declined in FY25. That suggests the legacy device-protection business, not some new competitive threat, is the more likely source of the year’s revenue softness, even though the company has not broken out segment-wise revenue publicly.

The risks

The takeaway

Zopper’s history argues against romanticising a “founding vision.” The company spent seven years — 2011 to 2018 — failing at three different consumer businesses under the same brand, and its actual, durable business only became visible after the founders lost the one asset (the marketplace and POS platform) they had spent the longest building. What survived the sale to PhonePe was not a product but an instinct: that people accept a bundled offer shown to them at the point of a transaction far more readily than they seek one out. Businesses built on that instinct do not need a clean origin story to work; they need the discipline to keep rebuilding around the part of the business that is actually pulling its weight, and the honesty to notice when, as in FY25, growth has stalled even while costs have not.

Frequently asked questions

What does Zopper do?

Zopper builds the technology, underwriting-partner integrations and, since December 2024, the licensed broking infrastructure that lets banks, NBFCs, retailers, OEMs and fintechs sell insurance and extended-warranty products to their own customers at the point of sale, without underwriting the risk itself.

Who owns and backs Zopper?

Zopper is privately held. Its institutional backers include Elevation Capital, Blume Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, Creaegis, Dharana Capital and ICICI Venture, built up across a Series C round in September 2022 and a Series D round in November 2024. Co-founder Surjendu Kuila is chief executive.

Is Zopper profitable?

No. Zopper posted a net loss of ₹203.4 crore in FY25 on revenue of ₹363.3 crore, widening from a ₹46.8 crore loss in FY24, according to Inc42 Datalabs’ reading of its financial filings.

How much has Zopper raised, and what is it worth?

Zopper has raised roughly $125 million in total across its marketplace and insurtech-era rounds combined, per Inc42 Datalabs and Outlook Business (March 2026). Inc42 Datalabs estimates its valuation at around $182 million as of the November 2024 Series D round, though the company has not officially confirmed this figure.

Is Zopper going public?

Management has said it is targeting an initial public offering in FY29, after guiding to a gross written premium run rate of about ₹1,000 crore for FY26 and 35–40% annual growth thereafter, according to Outlook Business and SMEStreet reporting from March 2026.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

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