Turaco, Kenya’s leading Insurtech firm has announced the close of a $10 million Series A equity round led by AfricInvest, via the Cathay Africinvest Innovation Fund, and existing investor, Novastar Ventures. The round also included participation from Enza Capital, Global Partnerships, Zephyr Acorn, Operator Stack, Asi Ventures Limited, and push ventures.
Turaco collaborates with leading tech firms in emerging markets that have a sizable consumer base or workforce including Sun King, One Acre Fund, Tugende, M-KOPA, and VisionFund. Over half a million lives in Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda have already been covered by the company’s custom medical, life, asset, and car insurance packages that were built and provided through partnerships.
Founded in 2019, Turaco is a distributor, broker, and key customer interface between the underwriter and the end consumer. Turaco integrates its service as a white-labelled product that is bundled with a partner’s main product or service and integrates with their current payment systems to collect premiums in order to reach underserved consumers and low-income earners.
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Turaco helps businesses to effectively and without additional risk or expense integrate insurance into their products and services. Turaco has a powerful API integration that enables seamless collaboration with its external partners. For instance, Turaco collaborated with M-KOPA in 2019 to integrate insurance into M-KOPA’s products for the company’s clients and direct sales reps.
M-KOPA is a FinTech platform that offers digital financial services to underbanked individuals. Insurance is utilized to increase revenue, client and agent retention, and resiliency now operational in three countries. Since its debut, the technology-enabled insurance platform has expanded to position itself among cutting-edge insurance solutions. Products from Turaco are priced at around $2 per month, along with clear terms and conditions, and have a fully digitalized claiming process that enables consumers to file by WhatsApp or phone call and payout via mobile money in less than three days.
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Patricia Rinke, Investment Officer at AfricInvest stated that the company’s innovative distribution model responds to the unmet demand in the African insurance sector, and they look forward to working with Turaco as they continue to build on their early success.
Oluwatoyin Emmanuel Olubake, Investment Director at Novastar Ventures stated that Turaco has grown over 300% since Novastar’s initial Investment in 2020 and are excited to continue partnering with the exceptional team at Turaco and welcome new investors including AfricInvest, Global Partnerships and Enza Capital. Oluwatoyin also noted that the capital will help the company to further grow its world-class team, develop new products, accelerate partnerships and access new markets in service of its goal to mitigate the impact of daily shocks for millions of vulnerable people across Africa
with more than 500 million mobile subscribers in Africa, the majority lack insurance. With the most recent round of finance, Turaco is well-positioned to take on this untapped market and intensify its expansion ambitions through strategic partnerships.
In 2020, the company received Ksh218 million in seed money. Along with some angel investors who had already invested in Turaco. The cash arrived a year after the business received US$1.2 million in Seed capital.
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