MSIG Asia poured ₹22 crore into Bengaluru-based Ancileo on 25 March 2026 to launch embedded travel insurance inside travel bookings from 1 April 2026.
And the deal is closed. Ancileo CEO Shruti Mehta told reporters the ₹22-crore infusion values the company at ₹125 crore post-money and funds co-branded policy launches with MSIG Asia in Q2 2026.
“Indians booked 13.9 crore domestic and 2.4 crore international trips on air and rail in FY25, yet only 19% bought travel cover,” Mehta said. “By April we’ll let travellers activate ₹1 lakh or ₹3 lakh policies starting ₹199 with a single click during checkout.”
Embedded policies will be underwritten by MSIG India, a 100% subsidiary of MSIG Holdings Asia Ltd, at zero KYC friction for travellers. A pilot on MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip went live Wednesday evening; users on both platforms can see MSIG’s plan choices right after payment checkout.
Ancileo’s existing API stack already links 42 flight and bus operators, 3 hotel chains and 2 ride-hailing apps across India, Middle East and Southeast Asia. The new capital will add 5 lakh monthly users on the embedded stack by July 2026, Mehta projected.
“Until now travel agents and OTAs kept margins clean while insurance was a post-purchase push—friction that cost the industry ₹800 crore in unprotected trips last year,” said Amit Shrivastava, SVP at MSIG India. “With this ₹22-crore plunge we’ll service 9 lakh policies in the first quarter itself, that’s about ₹45 crore in premium.”
MSIG’s ₹22 crore is the largest single cheque cut by an insurer into an insurtech in India this fiscal. In December 2025, Reliance General had led a ₹15-crore round in TravelInsure, but MSIG’s deal dwarfs that by 47%.
Ancileo’s term sheet was signed 1 March 2026 at the Bangalore Club after three weeks of due diligence in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Legal counsel was led by AZB & Partners and the funds will hit Ancileo’s ICICI Bank NRE account within seven days.
MakeMyTrip’s CFO Ashish Kishore confirmed the pilot deal on Thursday. “We already send 2.8 lakh daily push notifications on travel insurance but saw only 3% take-up,” Kishore said. “One-click options during payment could lift penetration to 19% within three months.”
The embedded plans offer trip cancellation, medical evacuation and baggage delay covers—matching current MSIG standard retail products. Shubham Shukla, CTO of Cleartrip, said the new stack will drop checkout time by 15 seconds and cut the API latency to 180 milliseconds from 450 ms.
MSIG and Ancileo aim to reach 85% of India’s online travellers within 18 months without lifting a single sales agent. Employees from both sides have already merged into the same Bengaluru tech hub on 20 March 2026.
MSIG Asia itself has been India-regulated since 2004 and holds assets worth ₹15,200 crore under management. The fresh capital expands its insurtech exposure after a ₹8-crore seed in 2023 in a Kerala-based logistics insurance startup.
