Yashish Dahiya

Co-Founder, Chairman & Group CEO, PB Fintech (Policybazaar / Paisabazaar); Angel Investor

Reviewed Updated Jul 30, 2026

This profile is AI-generated. If you spot an error, please help us fix it by sharing a URL to the correct information.

Location Gurugram, India
Last Verified Investment PB Healthcare Services (Seed) — Sep 3, 2025
Social @YashishDahiya LinkedIn
Stage Focus
seed angel
Sector Focus
fintech wealthtech consumer-fintech healthcare healthcare-services fitness

Background

Yashish Dahiya is the Co-Founder, Chairman and Group CEO of PB Fintech Limited, the parent company of India’s largest online insurance marketplace Policybazaar and lending/credit marketplace Paisabazaar 1 2. He co-founded Policybazaar in 2008 alongside Alok Bansal and Avaneesh Nirjar, and Paisabazaar in 2014 3 2. PB Fintech was publicly listed on Indian stock exchanges in November 2021 1.

Before Policybazaar, Dahiya was Managing Director of ebookers.com, a pan-European online travel distributor and FTSE 250 company listed on Nasdaq, and earlier a management consultant with Bain & Co. in London 1. He holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from IIT Delhi, a post-graduate diploma in management from IIM Ahmedabad, and an MBA from INSEAD 4 1. He was named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2010 in the Financial Services category 4.

His personal angel-investing activity is modest and thesis-adjacent: a small number of Indian fintech and wealthtech seed deals, one fitness advisory position from 2016-2017, and — most substantially — a large personal cheque into the PB Healthcare spinout in 2025 alongside PB Fintech’s corporate stake 5 6 7 8.

Stated Thesis

Dahiya has not published a formal investing thesis. His public commentary focuses on operating philosophy for founders rather than an investment lens. In an interview with YourStory, he advised founders to think long-term and to maintain personal integrity, saying: “Don’t lie to yourself; once you start lying to one person, you do it to everybody and soon you start lying to yourself” 9.

Inferred Thesis

Sample size caveat: Only four personal angel investments are publicly documented (ZFunds, Junio, Sugmya Finance, Fitso), plus a fifth large personal stake in PB Healthcare that is a corporate spinout he leads rather than a pure external angel deal 5 6 7 8 10. This is not a large enough sample to compute meaningful percentages; the description below is qualitative.

  • Sector: Concentrated in Indian financial services adjacent to his operator expertise — wealthtech (ZFunds), consumer fintech / kids’ payments (Junio), NBFC lending (Sugmya Finance) — plus one fitness/consumer bet (Fitso) and healthcare via PB Healthcare 5 6 7 8 10. This overlaps directly with Policybazaar and Paisabazaar’s operating domain.
  • Stage: All four external angel investments were early — Angel or Seed rounds 5 6 7 8.
  • Geography: All verified investments are India-based (Gurugram, Delhi NCR) 5 6 7 8.
  • Check role: Almost always a participant, not a lead. Rounds are typically institutionally led (Elevation Capital led ZFunds; NB Ventures later led Junio’s Pre-Series A) with Dahiya joining alongside other operators like Kunal Shah (CRED), Ashneer Grover (BharatPe), and Alok Bansal 5 6 7.
  • Co-investor patterns: Frequently invests alongside other Indian fintech founder-operators. In Sugmya Finance he co-invested with Alok Bansal (his Policybazaar co-founder) and Naveen Kukreja (Paisabazaar CEO) 7.
  • Distinctive: His largest single check is not a startup bet but a personal ₹52.2 Cr stake in PB Healthcare Services (a PB Fintech spinout) alongside PB Fintech’s corporate ₹539.4 Cr and General Catalyst’s ₹435 Cr 8. This is a “founder doubling down on his own thesis” investment rather than a diversified angel portfolio.

Portfolio

Company Year Stage Source
Fitso 2017-03-17 Angel ($200K) 5
Junio 2021-01-27 Angel ($1M) 6
Sugmya Finance 2024-03 Seed ($3M) 7
ZFunds 2024-12-03 Seed (₹25 Cr / ~$3M) 10
PB Healthcare Services 2025-09-03 Seed (₹52.2 Cr personal stake in $218M round) 8

In Their Own Words

On founder integrity, in an interview with YourStory:

“Don’t lie to yourself; once you start lying to one person, you do it to everybody and soon you start lying to yourself.” 9

On equity distribution at Policybazaar, quoted in a MoneyInc profile:

“I genuinely don’t do things to be a leader — I like being free and I assume that others are like me. At Policybazaar, managers have more equity than the founders.” 4

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials found. Portfolio founders (Manish Kothari of ZFunds; the Junio, Sugmya Finance, and Fitso teams) have not published on-the-record accounts of working with Dahiya as an angel that could be verified against a primary source.

Sources

  1. The Fintech Times, “Yashish Dahiya, Chairman & Group CEO PB Fintech,” behind-the-idea profile. Accessed July 2026. https://thefintechtimes.com/behind-the-idea-policybazaar/yashish-dahiya-chairman-group-ceo-pb-fintech/↩↩↩↩

  2. Wikipedia, “Policybazaar,” accessed July 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Policybazaar↩↩

  3. Wikipedia, “Paisabazaar,” accessed July 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisabazaar↩

  4. MoneyInc, “10 Things You Didn’t Know about Yashish Dahiya,” accessed July 2026. https://moneyinc.com/yashish-dahiya/↩↩↩

  5. The Tech Portal, “Fitness app Fitso raises $200K from a group of angel investors,” March 17, 2017. Accessed July 2026. https://thetechportal.com/2017/03/17/fitso-angel-funding/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  6. Enablers Investment (syndicating YourStory), “Kunal Shah, Deepak Abbot, and more invest USD 1 Million in ex-Paytm execs founded Junio,” January 27, 2021. Accessed July 2026. https://enablersinvestment.com/kunal-shah-deepak-abbot-and-more-invest-usd-1-million-in-ex-paytm-execs-founded-junio/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  7. Crunchbase, “Seed Round – Sugmya Finance” (March 2024). Accessed July 2026. https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/sugmya-finance-seed–8993572f↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  8. Entrackr, “Decoding PB Healthcare’s $218 Mn seed round, shareholding pattern and valuation,” September 2025. Accessed July 2026. https://entrackr.com/decoding/decoding-pb-healthcares-218-mn-seed-round-shareholding-pattern-and-valuation-978205↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  9. YourStory, “Coronavirus: PolicyBazaar’s Yashish Dahiya says startups must build cash reserves,” April 2020. Accessed July 2026. https://yourstory.com/2020/04/coronavirus-policybazaar-founder-yashish-dahiya-startups-cash-reserves↩↩

  10. Inc42, “Wealthtech Platform ZFunds Bags INR 25 Cr To Boost Its Tech Stack,” December 3, 2024. Accessed July 2026. https://inc42.com/buzz/wealthtech-platform-zfunds-bags-inr-25-cr-funding-to-boost-its-tech-stack/↩↩↩