Turaco, a Kenyan based startup has secured Sh223 million ($2 million) in a series of seed equity investment to help it grow and upscale its operations across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The micro-insurtech start-up also aims to develop proprietary technology and provide recruitment of key hires to position the business for continued growth in 2021. The start-up received the investment from a number of organizations such as Novastar Ventures – a venture capitalist firm -, Mercy Corps Ventures, Musha Ventures, GAN Ventures, Zephyr Acron, and several angel investors that have been prior investors in the firm.
According to Ted Pantone, co-founder, and CEO of Turaco, the funding will allow the start-up to move to the next level. “We are thrilled to partner with Novastar Ventures and all of our other great investors to help build Turaco to the next stage of growth. Our vision is to insure a billion people in the next 25 years. Investors like these will help propel us to that reality,” he said.
On the other hand, according to Niraj Varia, Novastar Ventures Partner, hundreds of millions of people have their lives disrupted every year by risks that can be managed by insurance. The Turaco team has shown that their model has the potential to bring insurance to them in a way that could fundamentally reshape the way they experience risk. We are excited to partner with them to help solve this problem.’
The seed funding comes to the start-up a year after it had raised an investment of Sh134 million ($1.2 million). The start-up was founded in 2018 to free people from the fear of unexpected financial shocks. It works towards this by providing simple, useful, and affordable health and life insurance products to emerging market consumers. To date, Turaco has insured over 70,000 people and paid over 2,000 claims in an average turnaround time of less than three days. Affordable health and life insurance
