Virat Kohli might not have had the best day yesterday with his team being knocked out of yet another IPL, but his finances haven’t fared all that badly.
Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma have seen their stakes in Digit Insurance rise to Rs. 10 crore after the company’s IPO today. The duo had together invested Rs. 2.5 crore into the company in February 2020. Virat and Anushka have thus seen a 4x growth in their investment in four years.
Digit Insurance went public today and began trading on the stock markets. The company had priced its IPO at Rs. 258 to Rs. 272 per equity share, and it opened trade at a sedate Rs. 285. But the scrip rose through the day, ending at Rs. 306, which was a 12 percent gain from the opening price.
In 2020, Virat Kohli had bought 2.66 lakh shares of Digit Insurance for Rs 2 crore at a price of Rs. 75 per share. His wife, actress wife Anushka Sharma, had invested 50 lakh through a private placement. In 2021, Virat Kohli had also appeared for TV ads for Digit, doing what the ads called was the ‘Digit dance’. The ads had been played prominently during the IPL season.
“Insurance in India is highly underpenetrated and therefore, our marketing objective was to increase the awareness for insurance and recall for Digit Insurance as a platform,” Vivek Chaturvedi, chief marketing officer, Digit Insurance had said about the campaign. “Who better than the very passionate youth icon, Virat Kohli who is loved by every age group of Indians. From a brand perspective, we wanted to highlight that Digit has earned the trust of 1.5 crore Indians for their car, bike, health and travel insurance, and that reflects in our almost five-star customer rating on Google and Facebook,” he added.
“Our brief was straightforward,” said Edward Anthony who headed the agency behind the ad. “We had Virat, a 5-Star rated player and Digit, an almost 5-Star rated insurance. All we needed to do was to marry these two in a fun way and with IPL around the corner, #SwitchToDigit was conceptualised with a twist that would leave people with a smile at the end,” he had added.
Headquartered in Bengaluru, Digit runs a platform which allows users to buy health insurance, car insurance, bike insurance, fire insurance, burglary insurance, and other insurance products. Digit says its USP is to make insurance products simple. “We’re simplifying insurance products so that even a 15-year-old can comprehend them,” it says on its website. Digit now claims to have served over 3 crore customers who’ve bought its products. In 2021, the company had become a unicorn with a valuation of $1.9 billion. Digit has been profitable since 2021, and recorded a net profit of Rs. 1,290 crore for the 9 months ended FY24, which was an increase of Rs. 100 crore over the same period in 2023.